The Rule of Knowledge

by Scott Baker

  It was the sound of horses, like thunder over the rise of the field. I swung the hoe again, and again, and again. I could hear the shouts of the vicious men now. They were only seconds away. Again, again, again. There wasn’t time. More chips flew, and I could see the dust cloud rising over the nearest hill. I had fifteen seconds, maybe ten.

  I drew the hoe up high above my head, concerned more now with power in the blows than accuracy. I swung it down hard – the hoe’s head flew free and I smacked into the tree with the blunt end of what was suddenly a useless stick. Five seconds.

  In frustration I drew back from the tree, then ran hard and planted the stick in the ground, using it to launch myself up into the air like a pole-vaulter. Curled in a tight ball, I kicked out sideways and struck the trunk. Finally the tree fell across the road.

  I dove back into the thicket on the side of the road just as the first figure appeared around the bend, followed by a second, then a third. I looked at the tall, thick-bushed tree lying across the road and then at the riders as they slowed, reining in their horses. A shout went back through the ranks, and the train of soldiers stopped. The column parted, and a single rider came up through the ranks.

  It was the centurion I had watched beat Mishca. He had obviously survived the zealots’ attack, and his appearance suggested that he could survive most anyone. His jaw was square and his nose looked like it had been broken more than once. He gave a short, sharp command and two of the riders dismounted. They walked to the tree and drew their swords, taking turns to hack at where the tree’s trunk still clung by splintered shards.

  My eyes traced along the line, counting thirty men, and I was sure that the road around the bend held many more. Only a moment passed before the two guards sawed the tree in two and dragged the pieces off the road. My plan to slow them had gained Mishca only a couple of minutes. It wasn’t enough.

  The centurion rode up to the tree and dismounted. He looked at it carefully, a mere fifteen feet from where I lay in the grass, my heart pounding. He examined the trunk as one of the guards held out the head of the hoe I had used to fell the tree. The centurion took it and rose to his full height, at least six-and-a-half feet. He looked at the end of the sharpened digging tool as I gripped its shaft in my hand.

  ‘This was done on purpose, and done only just before we arrived. Whichever one of these—’ he held up the iron tool head again, ‘farmers—’ he spat the word, ‘did this, they are still here. I suspect very close.’ His voice was deep and menacing, and commanded the full attention of his troops. I did not need to hear anything more. I knew that if they looked they would find me in a matter of moments. I had no choice. I felt around my body, and my hand closed around a fist-sized stone.

  I threw it back along the tree line, clenching in my other hand what was now a thick staff, and rose up to one knee. The stone crashed in the bushes, drawing the soldiers’ attention as I hurled the staff like a spear at the man mounted on the nearest horse. The moment it left my grip, I set off in a sprint, chasing it. With his head turned back towards the sound of the stone, the man bore the full brunt of my carefully aimed throw. The thick staff connected with his cheek and threw him from his mount, sending his legs skywards.

  I was on the horse in seconds, and immediately dropped forward and hugged its neck to avoid the swing of a short sword levelled just above my shoulders. At the same time I dug my heels into the animal’s flanks and was jolted forward as the muscled beast sprang to life, galloping through the column and bursting out the front like a stone from its sling.

  I heard the calls and knew that the legion was following me. The horse sped along the road, keeping just ahead of its pursuers.

  CHAPTER 9

  The ambulance sped along the road, keeping just ahead of its pursuers. They were losing ground fast. Headlight reflections in the mirror had brought Lauren out of the story.

  ‘Shaun, they’re coming,’ she called.

  ‘How far?’ Shaun asked, speeding and struggling to maintain control of the broad van.

  ‘Maybe two hundred feet. I don’t know, but those lights are getting really bright.’

  ‘I see them,’ he said, looking in her side mirror. They were only about five seconds behind now, and the road was starting to straighten out, taking away whatever advantage Shaun had by using the corners of the road to shield them from gunfire.

  Lauren put the diary down and disappeared into the back of the ambulance.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Shaun called. She did not answer.

  The chase car was gaining now, and the first spatter of bullets started to hit them intermittently. Shaun was frantic now. He could not outrun them – the van just wasn’t fast enough.

  ‘Lauren, what are you doing?’ Silence. ‘Lauren!’ he shouted this time.

  ‘I’m looking,’ she replied.

  ‘Looking for what?’ he asked, trying to focus on the road ahead rather than the headlights getting closer in the rear-vision mirror. A bullet smashed into his driver’s-side mirror, shattering it and making Shaun swerve dangerously. The car was gaining on them, but at least the ambulance had a low rear bumper that prevented their pursuers getting a clear shot at the tyres.

  He heard Lauren moving things around in the back. ‘Lauren, get out of there! One of those bullets is going to come right through that door at this range!’

  ‘We can’t outrun them, Shaun,’ Lauren finally replied, surprisingly calmly. ‘They’re too fast. We have to let them get really close, and then smash them.’

  ‘Then smash them?’ Shaun parroted.

  ‘Let them get close, then slam on the brakes,’ Lauren said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Shaun was about to protest, when he stopped himself. She was right. They might just screw up the chase car enough to stop their pursuit.

  He hazarded a glance over his shoulder and saw Lauren strapping a long metal cylinder to the gurney.

  ‘What the hell? What’s in that cylinder?’ Shaun asked.

  ‘Oxy-acetylene. They use it for cutting metal to get people out of wrecks.’

  ‘Really?’ He tilted his head and jutted out his bottom lip, impressed by the random things she knew.

  ‘Ready?’

  Shaun steadied himself, checking again in the rear-view mirror. Two headlights stared back at him.

  ‘Okay, now!’ she yelled, grabbing tightly onto the surrounding shelving. Shaun lined up the pursing car as they rounded a bend in the road, and as they both sped up again, he slammed on the brakes. The van screeched and groaned in protest, but lost speed instantly, its tyres smoking up clouds of burned blue rubber as Shaun fought to keep the vehicle straight.

  Taken by surprise, the car slammed hard into the back of the ambulance, its nose crumpling with the force of the impact, its back end leaving the ground entirely. The car’s chassis twisted and buckled as it took the momentum. When the velocity was finally sucked out of it, the rear end came down and met the road with force.

  Inside the ambulance Shaun and Lauren had time to brace for the impact, but unsecured, the hobo in the centre of the seats slammed up against the front dashboard, knocking two of his teeth clean out.

  Lauren, who had wedged herself in between the shelving and the back of the passenger seat, was hit by several medical vials, but leaped into action again the instant the van settled. She reached up and found a heavy metal case, which she used to bash the top of the cylinder until the nozzle blew off. A rush of highly condensed gas hissed in a white plume. She unbolted the back doors and yelled to Shaun as she pushed them open: ‘Give me your keys.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘Your keys!’ she insisted.

  Shaun had no idea what she was thinking, but reached into his pocket and fished out his bunch of jangling metal keys. He tossed them back to her. Coming alongside the gurney, she kicked its brakes to unlock it, and then quickly sorted through his keys and found his novelty, pistol-shaped lighter.

  Without hesitation, she pulled the trigger on the mini pistol and thrus
t the flame in to the white jet of gas that was rushing out of the cylinder’s nozzle. The result was instantaneous: where there had been a whooshing mist of gas, now shot a roaring torch of flame. The orange jet pushed furiously outward, reaching a full six feet from the nozzle and forcing Lauren to lean back against the pressure. The heat was intense and the noise was an angry growl, like an animal had been woken roaring a tongue of flame.

  Shaun realised what she was doing and leaped through the seats to help Lauren push the bed backwards. With a surge of combined effort, they sent the whole contraption – bed, cylinder, flame and all – crashing through the back doors and onto the windscreen of the black car now crumpled against the van. Screams filled the burning interior of the car. The light from the flame illuminated the inside of what they could now see was a sleek, black BMW – or had been. The sound of death and popping, burning flesh mixed with the cloud of blue–grey smoke that billowed from the car’s shattered windows.

  Mesmerised by the heat and the light of what lay just beyond the open ambulance doors, Shaun had to force himself to climb back into the driver’s seat, Lauren following quickly behind. He gunned the engine and the ambulance lurched forward, leaving the medical contents to spill out of the open doors and onto the road.

  Before they rounded the next bend, he looked across Lauren into the passenger-side mirror – the only mirror still intact – and saw a flaming body emerge from the driver’s-side door and take a step, before falling to the ground.

  Still, burning, dead.

  CHAPTER 10

  Through the silent night a white streak hugged the road. Punctured, shattered and riddled with bullet holes, the ambulance was in need of an ambulance. A parody of itself – it was hard to believe it still ran. Right now it ran. It ran from the carnage it had left behind, and it ran with the fate of three lives in its cabin. Then, it ran out of gas.

  Shaun stared ahead at the road, not knowing where he was driving, but wanting to get there fast. His mind raced, images flashing in his head like gunshots. FLASH! Slamming into a man in the middle of nowhere. FLASH! Lauren’s face as she read the diary. FLASH! The man in black executing the motel clerk, and then the paramedic. My God, Shaun thought, realising that even he had used the dead driver’s body as a shield. What was happening? The rules were changing.

  The first splutter came accompanied by a sudden lurch as the ambulance lost power … then it recovered.

  ‘What was that?’ Lauren asked as she wrestled with the unconscious hobo for more room on the seat. Shaun did not need to look down. He had noticed that the gas was low, and now as they were being chased by nameless, faceless murderers in the middle of nowhere, they were about to run out.

  At least you all survived, even the hobo, Shaun’s brain commentated.

  ‘He is still alive, isn’t he?’ Shaun asked.

  Lauren was staring at the fuel gauge, preferring not to say anything, as if talking about it made it true.

  ‘Yeah, he’s still alive. I hate to think what he’ll smell like when he’s dead.’ She checked herself. ‘I mean, if he dies.’

  She had just barbecued a car full of men. Shaun knew that that had not sunk in yet. He was losing perspective too. The van sputtered again.

  ‘We’re not going to make it,’ Lauren finally voiced.

  ‘We’ll make it,’ he said, not sure where ‘it’ was. ‘No ambulance would leave a hospital without enough fuel to make a—’

  BEEP! The red fuel light switched to orange, and right next to it a word lit up: ‘Reserve’.

  ‘Reserve?’ he asked the console. ‘Reserve?’ he repeated. Then he looked at Lauren, his mouth spreading into a broad grin. ‘Of course. Reserve,’ he beamed.

  The release of tension was welcome.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked his wife.

  ‘Well, like you said, I think that we’re being chased because someone is looking for something. I think it’s this book, or this guy,’ she said, gesturing at the hobo, ‘or both, and I think that we should try and find out why that is. I think it’s …’

  But Shaun had stopped listening. Lauren had seen it too. Headlights. Behind them in the distance. She took a breath, and as if to counter the inevitability of the situation, she opened the book. The ambulance rounded a bend …

  … at breakneck speed, with only open road before me. The horse whirled the other way, taking the next bend even faster …

  The headlights closed in on them.

  … but I did not relent. A spear sailed past my ear and lodged itself in a tree to my left. Riding out in the open, I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the spears found my back, so I did the only thing I could think of: I spun the horse off the road and charged full speed into the thicket lining the path.

  ‘We have to get off the main road. We can’t outrun them like this.’

  I ducked the branches that slapped at my face, hoping that at least some of the riders would follow. I had to lead them away from the town.

  It was then that I heard calls behind me.

  ‘That’s him. He’s the one we want!’

  It did not make sense. I burst clear of the trees and into a clearing, and too late I realised, into a trap.

  The ambulance spun hard to the left, taking the first fork off the main road they had seen yet. Shaun switched off the headlights and turned sharply again as another signposted road came into view: ‘Charlotte 13 miles’. Civilisation. So close, and yet behind them, he saw the headlights take the first turn. ‘How did they get here so fast?’

  I asked myself the question, but I knew the answer. They had been waiting. As I looked at the long line of horses stretched across the clearing, it became obvious. I reined in my steed; I had nowhere to go. Behind me, my pursuers burst clear of the trees and slowed, seeing that I was now all but surrounded. I realised that they had not wanted to attack the town at all. They had come for me. It was at that moment I heard a feverish yell from somewhere down the line. My eyes told me what it was, but my heart did not want to believe it.

  Kicking and screaming, Mishca was being held by two large guards. As I watched, one struck him across the face. I turned my horse slowly to face them. The complete line of mounted soldiers, maybe twenty of them, kept their animals in check, watching from a distance. I moved closer.

  The ambulance came over a rise and the road dropped away steeply. It seemed that whatever new direction they took, it was a shortcut to the outskirts of the city.

  ‘Look for a map,’ he said. When Lauren did not respond he spoke again, loudly. ‘Close the book and look for a map to the hospital! All ambulances have them. Something that shows them all the alternative routes if the main roads are blocked.’

  Lauren searched the glove compartment. A street directory sat on top of a hand-held radio and some official-looking papers. ‘There’s a map here!’ she said, as she held up the radio and pulled the directory out.

  ‘See if you can get someone on the radio, and then you’re going to have to navigate me to the hospital.’

  They were well and truly in suburbia now. Houses, streetlights and other cars blurred past. It brought Shaun some comfort, thinking that their pursuers were less likely to open fire with other people around. He was wrong.

  The first shot went high, taking out one of the red lights atop the ambulance.

  ‘They don’t care,’ Lauren said, reading his mind. ‘Okay, there’s a main road coming up. Go left.’ She fiddled with the radio in her hand, raising nothing but static. Shaun pulled hard on the wheel, shooting across a line of traffic that hadn’t seen him coming. A bottle of something flew out from the back of the open van section and smashed on the road, and cars swerved to avoid it.

  ‘Right up ahead,’ she said, turning the map over, ‘or maybe left.’

  ‘Lauren!’ he snapped. He glanced in the passenger-side mirror and saw that the BMW had made the turn.

  ‘Right. Definitely right,’ she said with less conviction than her husband liked. He spun the w
heel hard, just as two more slugs slammed into the side-rear of the van. Shaun flinched and ducked instinctively as the bullets rang out in the cabin, then he looked up, straight into a wall of oncoming traffic.

  ‘Arrrghh!’ he screamed as the first of the three lanes of cars began to swerve out of his way, blaring their horns.

  Lauren spun the map round and said quietly, ‘Oh, it was left.’

  Without missing a beat Shaun reached over and flicked a switch. Immediately sirens and the lights that still worked blared to life, alerting the oncoming traffic to its presence. Like the parting of the Red Sea, the road opened up before them.

  The black BMW used a very different approach to clear its path into the oncoming traffic: automatic gunfire. Even with the sirens blaring, Shaun and Lauren could hear the rapid-fire explosion as the machine guns sang their tune of destruction. The BMW literally punched a hole through the centre of the traffic by shooting directly into the centre lane.

  Vehicles with bursting tyres, radiators and drivers’ heads swung out of the centre lane and into those cars on either side. Some made flips like a Hollywood stunt show. Cars clipped other cars, people did not quite get completely out of the way, and the cars in front acted like ramps to the speeding cars behind, sending them skyward, flipping and rolling in the air, propulsion intensified by gas tanks exploding mid-air from collisions and bullet impacts. The colossal mass of destruction, which would be later called the ‘Charlotte Derby’ on the evening news, was the cumulative effect of hundreds of drivers panicking, dying and losing control of their speeding vehicles.

  The pursuing black BMW sped through the carnage, cutting through the mass of traffic like a knife. For about ten seconds.

  An oncoming Lotus, known throughout the world for its sleek pointed hood and design, seemed to emerge from nowhere and burrowed under the front of the BMW at full speed. The BMW’s resulting somersault was cut short as it was hit flat on the roof by another car flipping in the opposite direction. The two roofs came together, just off-centre. The BMW’s forward rotation stopped dead, and it started to spin around its vertical axis at incredible speed. Like a drill falling from the sky, it bore down into the carnage below, burrowing awkwardly into an open-top convertible that contained an elderly lady with blue hair. Then the BMW exploded.