“Now is not the time to—”
“It’s a pretty simple question.”
“Me driving gives us the best chance of success.”
“How many passable roads are there out of the city?”
“Many.”
She makes a buzzer sound. “You’re wrong. There’s one. Only one.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“How do you think I got here?”
Naia taps her index finger against the machine’s exterior.
“I’m the only one who’s come in from the outside after the world ended. I’m the only one who knows the way across the freeway. I’m the only one who knows where most of the friggin’ mines are.”
“What are you saying, little lady?”
“I’m saying it’s time to step aside, big man.”
A beat and then Brixton grins. “Fine, yeah, but I’m definitely riding shotgun.”
We clamber in, me in the back next to Del Frisco and Asian Phil. We listen to the purr of the engine as Donkey stands outside near a weather-proof controller we hope will power the roll-up door.
“We ready?” Brixton says, leaning back from the front seat. “Because we’re in a bad patch here and once we bag out there’s no coming back.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to come back to, brother,” Del Frisco says. “Whatever was here once is dead.”
I nod and so do the others and then Brixton whistles to Donkey who slaps the controller (before climbing back into the rig) and up goes the roll-up door.
There’s several dozen Dubs milling around outside and we wait for Donkey to rejoin us and then Naia stands down on the gas and drives right at the Dubs.
23
The machine pulps through the Dubs who fall under the tires in bunches. We grind over the dead and down a ramp, speeding through the bottom floors of VC1.
Packs of Dubs are visible up ahead, dropping out of the ceiling, appearing out of mechanical side doors.
Those that we don’t drive over are shot through the gun ports, the machine taking a turn, the reinforced front bumper swatting catching a handful of Dubs and smearing them against the sides of the building.
We drop straight down, headed toward a final roll-up door at the bottom of the ramp, the space here overrun by the Dubs.
Naia honks the horn and flashes her lights and the Dubs turn and squeal and she drives right into them.
We slam into the Dubs and blast out through the door, taking a hard right and then we speed over a median and onto the city’s main thoroughfare.
I glance back and see that some of the Dubs have opened the doors on the lower levels of VC1 to let their comrades in. The Dub invaders appear in a crazed state, sensing victory, rushing like a tide from every direction into the mother building, barnstorming in and heading (I hope) up to share in some terrible communion with Odin and his killers.
We’re forced to outrun the Dubs for three city blocks and then coast to a stop in a deserted section of the city. Donkey exits the machine, Raven drone and controller in hand, and runs a short distance before flinging the device into the air.
He synchs his controller and then re-enters our ride. Once inside he throws open his rucksack to reveal a small portable screen that he hooks to the controller by a thin, black cable. I look over Donkey’s shoulder as he powers the screen up to reveal black-and-white footage shot by the drone.
Naia drives off as me and Del Frisco watch, mesmerized by the images beamed back by the drone.
We watch as the machine does a leisurely lap around various city blocks, flying over streets and alley-ways and between buildings we’ve climbed down and over and through before. It moves higher with every pass until the images are of the tops of the buildings.
Soon the summit of the Vertical City is visible, smoke pouring out of it. There are figures scrambling out of doors and flashes from weapons can be seen. There appears to be a last stand of some kind being waged on the roof.
The drone dips down and Odin is clearly visible on the wide plaza of cement that adorns the top of the building.
He has his finest clothes on, his hands outstretched, ordering his loyal guards and the Prowlers that remain to fire at the approaching Dubs.
Odin’s forces shoot down several rows of the ghouls and are then overwhelmed by the advancing horde of the undead.
Odin doesn’t fight back, choosing instead to flee toward a pole where the city’s flag still flutters.
He’s grabbed halfway there and pulled to the ground by one of the Dubs.
The drone drops low a final time until its flight path appears to be only a few feet over the heads of those gathered on the top of VC1.
Gus and Odin and the others seem almost close enough to touch. Gus wraps his arms around Odin who punches and kicks at him.
Gus lifts Odin up, peering at the former leader as if he was a specimen in a science experiment.
I plan to look away when Gus tears into Odin’s flesh and then something unexpected happens. Gus holds Odin tight to his chest in a kind of embrace. And then he moves haltingly through the rows of Dubs that step aside, giving him a wide berth to the edge of the building.
Odin bucks and flails his arms and then Gus holds Odin up for the other Dubs to see. The man who ruled everything for as long as most of us can remember stares right into the drone’s lens and if he’s astonished by what’s happening, he doesn’t show it. His face has gone blank as Gus lifts him a final time. Lifts him like a sacrificial offering and hurls him off the building’s roof.
Del Frisco and I share a look, we can’t really believe what we’ve seen, and then we turn back to watch Gus trudge over to the flag pole.
He grabs the rope that holds the flag and pulls it down and turns, the flag fluttering in his hands. And then he holds the flag up to the other Dubs and they seem to cheer as one as the drone flies behind another building and footage flickers and turns to snow.
“It’s over,” I say to myself softly. “Jesus, it’s … it’s really over.”
Del Frisco nods and says, “VC1 got itself a new ruler now.”
My eyes drag over to catch Naia’s in the rearview mirror and I manage a smile as a sensation, some subtle vibration in the air, hits me.
I can feel the bullet before it impacts and then—
BOOM!
The rear windshield explodes in a hail of glass.
“THEY’RE COMING!” Naia screams and I duck and look back to see a collection of motorcycles pursuing us, the drivers leaning out and firing.
“Matthais!” Del Frisco shouts, “the sonofabitch ain’t crossed over yet!”
Naia drives evasively, swinging the wheel, gunning the machine down a sidestreet as Brixton tilts out of his window and fires back at the warpack, shouting:
“Keep your claws out and sharp!”
Naia floors the machine, driving through an area peppered with construction equipment, swerving through a small forest of abandoned road-building equipment as the motorcycles chase.
My harness tightens as we zigzag over a sidewalk to bypass an overturned demolition truck with the words “We’ll knock your block off!” painted on the side. Brixton’s still firing out his gun, Naia cursing, her eyes hopping in every direction.
The road widens up ahead and Naia wrenches the machine in gear, accelerating, the motorcycles keeping pace. Donkey and Asian Phil fire back through the busted rear windshield as Del Frisco and me keep low.
Through a gap in our seat I can see our drone in the distance, flying twenty feet above the road.
Below that are five motorcycles gaining ground.
At the lead is Matthais, his bloody neck wrapped in some kind of scarf, machine-gun in one hand, a backpack over his shoulders.
Brixton screams for us to get down as Naia flips the wheel at the moment the motorcycles blast forward and we streak across the first bridge, swerving around sandbags and the wreckage of the city’s last battle.
The motorcycles close and the machine swings out wide a
nd clips one of the bikes, sending it fireballing into a deserted storefront on the other side of the bridge.
We cheer and Matthais riddles the back of the machine as Asian Phil fires a burst at him as we race through the city.
Matthais nearly eats a streetlamp, able to drift-slide to his left. He rights his bike and swivels and shoots down our drone and then vanishes into an alley.
Three motorcycles are left, the first working to get past us. Asian Phil leans out and shoots the driver through the neck, the man’s bike hitting a toppled hot-dog cart, shotputting the soon-to-be dead driver into an orange street sign.
And then there were two, one motorcycle driven by a woman, the other by two smaller men, one piloting the bike while the other fires from behind, assassin-style.
One of their bullets bounces off the interior of the machine’s roof and rips into Donkey’s shoulder. Donkey barely registers it, clamping a hand around the wound while firing, the four of us forced to disengage from our harnesses so that we can continue to keep low and out of sight.
I turn back and catch a quick look from Brixton.
“How far to the freeway?!” I say.
Brixton throws up a hand as we crest a rise, the freeway looming in the distance, maybe a mile or two away.
Naia swings the wheel again, weaving down to the left, smashing through a crude barricade made of stacked dumpsters.
The collision jars us, but we continue on, Del Frisco looking left to right.
“Where is he?” he asks of Matthais. “Where’d that slippery bastard go?!”
Asian Phil shouts and I look back to see the motorcycle with the two goons slowing. The shooter unsheathes something long and metallic, a tube of some sort, that he rests on his shoulder.
“RPG!” Asian Phil screams as—
BOOM!
The shooter fires a rocket that bursts from the metal tube in a flash of smoke.
I can hear Del Frisco’s panicked breathing as the rocket soars directly at us, Naia veering off to the left, clipping a push-cart that divests the machine of its side-view mirror.
Metal eats metal, the cart gouging into the side of the machine as the rocket corkscrews past and detonates against a junked yellow cab.
The debris from the detonation spiderwebs every window on the side of the machine closest to it, Brixton recoiling, pieces of glass lodged in the side of his face.
Pissed, he kicks at his frosted window, nearly climbing out of the machine, screaming, squeezing out an arc of bullets at the two-person motorcycle.
One of his slugs hit the shooter just as he’s preparing to fire another rocket.
The round evidently hits an explosive because the motorcycle disappears in a greasy, orange fireball.
Before we can cheer we’re tossed around like quarters in a washing machine, Naia driving over a section of asphalt rutted with deep potholes.
The motorcycle with the female assassin accelerates a final time, the woman spraying her gun wildly at us and then Naia slams on the brakes as—
WHAM!
Female assassin’s bike jackhammers into the back our machine, the woman launched through the shattered rear windshield.
Without missing a beat, the female assassin brings her gun up at us and Zeus thrusts at her.
She plants the gun between Zeus’s eyes and pulls the trigger.
The gun rolls over empty.
Del Frisco surges forward and punches the woman in the face.
She falls back through the open windshield and lands horribly on her head, her neck cracked, her body rolling into a garbage-strewn gutter.
“We’re there!” Naia screams and we all look up to see the freeway’s metal and cement skeleton. The freeway connects downtown to the outer boroughs, curling like an arched eyebrow over the river.
Sparks spray as we hit the interchange that leads onto the freeway proper, the path ahead becoming visible.
It won’t be easy to cross the freeway, the cement dotted with ruined cars and trash and moldering corpses and the wreckage of at least one airplane whose tail-section caved in a section of ramp fifty yards ahead.
And to make matters worse there are mines hidden amidst the debris.
Carefully placed there before the city’s fall by the final military units that wanted to prevent the Dubs on the outside from getting in.
Naia slows, scanning the road ahead.
“You sure you know the way?” Brixton says.
She nods and then there’s a note in the distance.
The whine of a motorcycle.
We look back to see Matthais, gunning his bike at us.
“That fucker is incredibly persistent,” Brixton says.
Naia gives the machine some gas and we jolt off, tacking around the junk and the hidden spaces where I presume the mines are hidden.
We fire back at Matthais who expertly uses the debris as cover. His shots are well-placed, a few thumping into the machine’s tires and rims even as Naia juices the engine.
I watch Matthais drop down on the side of his bike, shooting at us while simultaneously revving his engine.
Brixton and his men reload, returning fire, Del Frisco holding onto Zeus, Naia searching for an angle.
I think she finds one and realizes there are only seconds to act, because she vrooms forward and then lets up on the gas as Matthais draws close, Naia sucking him in.
She flips the wheels, taking a harrowing curve in the freeway, the concrete side-barriers gone, the river, a hundred feet below us, visible.
Naia feigns turning right as Matthais swings left, shredding the rear of the machine with his gun, tires blowing out.
Matthais nears us, plucking a grenade from his tactical vest as the still-intact concrete side-barriers draw closer.
Naia turns the wheel and our tires lock with Matthais’s bike.
“GET DOWN!” she screams, the machine and the motorcycle yoked in a kind of metal-twisting ballet.
Matthais drops his grenade, fighting to extricate his bike, Naia refusing to disengage, riding both of the machines down a decline, everything blurring past.
I look out my window and Matthais glares at me.
Every inch of his body looks like a monument to pain and suffering. His neck is a catastrophe, the wound caused by Gus now black and bloody and bubbling. The skin on his face and neck and arms is webbed and charred and lacerated, just starting to go gray which means it’s only a matter of time before he joins the ranks of the undead.
He raises his gun at me and then Naia breaks contact and we fishtail away from him, Del Frisco whispering into my ear:
“Villains always blink their eyes, Wyatt.”
And then Matthais does exactly that as his bike drifts back and to the left, momentarily disorienting him.
That’s when I notice the mines behind him.
The ones partially concealed under a pile of Dub bodies.
He raises his gun a final time and I hum the old rhyme that Gus taught me as a child:
Tiger, tiger, burning bright …
The front wheel of his bike trips a mine and—
In the forest of the night…
BOOM!
Matthais and his motorcycle vanish in a percussive explosion that sends portions of his corpse and the bike’s front tire a hundred feet into the air.
Naia doesn’t stop, flooring the machine, slaloming around the mines until we come to a section of the freeway that’s collapsed.
By the time we reached the collapsed section of freeway we’re riding on rims, the machine shrieking from the damage, the sound of gears shredding and metal folding under itself. Our ride sputters and stops and so we dismount and I take a step and crumple to the ground, overwhelmed by everything.
I watch Brixton meander over and grab something lying on the buckled cement.
It’s the Dub skull that Matthais used to hold his ammunition.
Brixton holds the skull up and then drops it to the ground and stomps it to pieces with his mighty black boots.
Turning from this, I see that I’ve dropped Dad’s old cellphone which lies on its side, flipped open, powered up, but running out of juice.
The old folders are still open, the photos I glanced at before still there. All the ones with the horrible angles and blurry images along with the video file, the one I chose not to play before.
For some reason I tap the file and up pops a video, the POV swinging wildly, an interior shot of room. The POV pans around and there I am, just a little kid. Probably a few months before the world ended, focused on opening up a wrapped box under a big, green tree. I can hear Mom’s voice off-screen as she’s apparently recording everything and I hear her say, “Why so serious, Wyatt?”
In the video I look up at her and my frown turns upside down (I’m at that age where you’re all head and teeth), and then someone swoops in from off camera and plops down next to me.
It’s Dad.
Jesus, but he looks happy.
Hamming it up and smiling and helping me open a wrapped box that’s filled with a big plastic truck.
The image fixes on me and Dad and I watch him lean down and kiss my head and whisper something with his eyes closed that I don’t remember and can’t make out.
And then the battery dies and I just sit there staring at the phone.
“Memories?” someone says as I look back to see Naia.
“I guess … more like ghosts.”
“Can’t be,” she says with a flick of her head. “Ghosts are dead, Wyatt. I’m thinking the stuff you’ve got on that phone is the stuff you keep in here,” she continues, pointing to her chest. “Things like that are always vital, always alive. They’re the opposite of ghosts.”
I smile and she helps me up and without thinking I hug her and she pauses and then hugs me back. Some of the others are doing the same and I think I see a tear or two fall from Brixton’s eyes.
My adrenaline buzz quickly fades and I can feel every ache and blow and pricked nerve-ending as I lever myself up. All the muscle that’s been punched or kicked over the last few hours, every inch of flesh scraped and gouged, seems to burn and bark at the same time.
“Which way?” I ask Naia as we move out, the sun sinking blood red over the horizon.
Vertical City Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 38
