Gabby pulled away from the window with her hand cupped over the left side of her head. Avony was reloading her sniper rifle with a bullet the length of a hand. Her ear buzzed from the noise.
Gabby shook her ear. "Avs, can you turn that down? I thought we'd been blown up."
Avony shrugged and leaned back into the hole. Machine gun fire from above announced that Milton was engaging the enemy. Gabby held her hand over her ear and stuck her gun back into the hole.
One of the raiders' vehicles was burning. The others swerved as the Frags laid down suppressive fire. Gabby picked off a maniac with a bloody spear standing on the hood of a black armored speedster. Once two more of their rides had been disabled, the other two skidded to a stop and let them go.
"That was easy," grinned Avony.
Gabby wasn't so sure. Nor was she sure the maniac had been using a spear. For a moment, she thought he had a paint brush in his hand.
Milton climbed down from the turret. "Like picking up chicks at a chicken convention."
Everyone groaned.
"Where to?" asked Mouse.
Michael unrolled the map. The Boulevard of Broken Wheels was a large zone. Smaller zones floated around it like moons while it moved across the map.
"This one seems kind of unhinged." Michael glanced up and indicated a direction to the left with his outstretched arm. "Head that direction while I try to decipher the map. Yell if you see anything interesting."
"Hey!" Avony exclaimed from the back. She was standing by an open footlocker. The lid was open and she had a banana in her hand. "Food!"
Avony handed out a variety of fruits and dried meats and bottles of water. Gabby hadn't realized how long it'd been since she'd eaten until after she took the first bite of an apple. Then she wolfed it down and went back to the locker for more.
There was enough room in back for them to sprawl out without touching each other. Avony curled up into the corner and promptly fell asleep. Gabby gave Mouse and Michael orders to wake them if they got tired or anything happened.
Lying on her side next to Milton, Gabby tried to get comfortable. "Hey Milton," she said leaning on one elbow, "can I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
"How'd you guys get caught? Last I saw you, you were on the Caterpillar headed northwest. And where's Celia and Drogan?"
Milton sat cross-legged and stared at his feet. "It happened a half a day out from when we left you. The snow was coming down hard so Celia wasn't keeping a wide radius with her insects."
Milton scrunched up his face as if he were trying to squeeze out the memories.
"The snow turned to a dense fog in the valley. I don't remember getting off the Caterpillar but suddenly I found myself walking through the snow and then there were soldiers surrounding me. Later they put me with Michael and Mouse. I can only assume Celia got away using her insects and used the Silly Lands on Drogan to counteract whatever illusion got cast on the rest of us."
The logic made sense to Gabby. Celia and Drogan had never taken the Double Eagle program.
"The weirdest thing about the fog and the snow," explained Milton, "was that I kept wondering where the flowers were, because I could smell a valley of them."
Gabby nodded. "That was the Crimson Queen. She pulled that same trick back in the GSA when I was a Coder. She caught most of our team that way."
"So you weren't caught by the Queen then?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I convinced Cassius and Damon to let me come to the Southlands as a spy. Only I had no idea how hard it would be to find Zaela."
Gabby touched the special program that Damon had imbedded into her arm. A way out if she lost, to save herself from the Delvers, though Gabby didn't think the Queen would allow her to get away.
"Am I an idiot?" Gabby asked.
"What? What do you mean? Of course you're not." Milton put his hand on her arm and gave it a squeeze. "We'd been floundering in the mountains for a year before you came along. Since you joined the Frags, we've been going from one success to the next. I believe in you Gabby. I know we'll figure this out."
"I wish I had your confidence, Milton. I feel like I keep leading us into a worse and worse situation."
"It's always darkest before you get laid?" Milton winked and Gabby was forced to laugh.
"You go to sleep." She punched him in the arm.
Gabby slept for a short time and then found herself wide awake. Mouse and Michael were still in the captain's chairs. Michael was hunched over the map, poking it with his finger.
"Care for a rest?" she asked.
Mouse nodded, but Michael shook his head. His black sunken eye sockets had their own shadows and the ice in his eyes seemed pale and faded rather than sharp.
"Both of you need to sleep. Let me take a turn." Gabby kicked Milton in the back of the leg. "We can drive and study the map while you two sleep."
Milton sat up and began rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. "Already?"
Michael sighed. "Okay. Maybe I'll figure something out after I sleep. I swear there's something about this map we're missing. A little bit ago I thought I actually moved one of the zones with my finger." Michael shrugged. "Either that or I'm hallucinating from a lack of sleep."
"Either way, you're resting."
Gabby took the driver's chair while Milton perched on his seat, not bothering to look at the map. The featureless desert immediately made her a little tired.
Pretty quickly, Gabby heard snoring in back. Mouse was curled up in Michael's arms. The protective way Michael had his arms around Mouse jerked her head back to the front.
The view was as boring as one of her grandparent's old board games. Gabby steered with her knees and watched Milton poke his finger around the map.
"What happened while you three were captives?" Gabby asked in a whisper.
Milton glanced up, looked in back, and then turned back to the map.
"They kept us in a cell. Fed us. There was a lot of time to do, um, nothing, and, um, occasionally one of us would disappear to be questioned. After the first week I told them just about everything to keep from being shocked."
"Pain sticks?"
"Yeah," he said, while dragging his finger across the Boulevard. Every so often it seemed like the zone moved in relation to his finger, so Gabby kept watching hoping to see the reason why.
"Did they ask about me?"
Milton made a sharp glance. "Yeah, I guess they did."
"So the Queen was waiting for me and knew about Zaela. Probably went and tortured her just because I was looking for her. Maybe the Queen thinks she's a spy, too."
Milton sighed. "Probably."
Gabby pulled her legs underneath her on the seat and went back to driving.
"It's not your fault, Gabby."
Gabby punched the steering wheel. "The last time Zaela and I talked we were in Final Raid. We fought. She was mad at me for trying to control her. Said I never understood her gifts, her need to do art and not play games."
"Do you understand?"
Gabby leaned over the steering wheel, staring at the deep blue sky hanging over the parched desert.
"When all I knew was LifeGame, it seemed like the most logical way. Now, having spent time in the Freelands and now the Realms, I don't know. Can't we take the best of all of these systems and people and make something work? Freedom with responsibility and cooperation, but no one trying to control it?"
"I think that's what Double Eagle was trying to do, minus the cooperation, of course."
Gabby slapped her hand on the wheel. "I mean, where do we go once we find Zaela? To the Blood Farm? I'd be bored to death there. I like games, I like to be challenged, but not doing repetitious boring farming stuff. You'd be debuffed in the head to be playing farm games."
Her frustration spent, Gabby quieted and let the monotony of the landscape numb her mind. Hours went by and nothing really changed. The little 'X' on the map barely moved across the huge zone. After a while, Gabby started hoping for raiders just t
o break things up.
Milton was idly moving his finger across the map, staring at the desert, when Gabby noticed the Boulevard zone move in a southwesterly direction. Before, any moves had seemed almost coincidental. This time, the zone moved for a ways before stopping.
Gabby and Milton shared glances. "Yeah, I saw that," she said.
Milton waited until the zone floated into the middle before doing it again. He dragged it southwest by a few inches before it got stuck against a small zone. He repeated the exercise twice more before declaring it a success. Attempts to move the zone in a different direction didn't work. His finger just slid through the map without the zone moving.
"Let me try." Milton pulled away from the map. Her finger dragged across the map to the southwest but the zone didn’t come.
"This is so debuffed. Maybe it's random or the Queen is messing with us."
"Let me try again."
This time, the finger drag failed for Milton.
"Did you do everything exactly the same?"
"Yeah." Milton shrugged, so Gabby glared.
"Okay, maybe I wasn't leaning over the dashboard, but generally the same."
"Do it the - exact - same way, again."
Milton pouted.
"Don't give me that look, Milton. It won't work. You look like those attractive bitchy women in the FunCar ads we were forced to watch on the way to school."
"I do? Maybe I could get a job doing that when we get out of here."
"Those women weren't real and neither are you." Gabby crossed her arms. "Just do it exactly the same, please."
Milton didn't so much sigh as deflate. Even his chest seemed slightly smaller as if the size of it depended on his ego.
While Milton made gyrations trying to remember the positioning of his hands, legs and even his hair, Gabby glanced into the back of the vehicle. She told herself she was just making sure everyone was still there, but it was hard to keep telling herself that when she lingered on Mouse and Michael.
He had his arm protectively over her and his hands clasped in front. Their bodies matched the same curve, hers slightly smaller. The hair had fallen from Mouse's face, revealing a contented smile. Even Michael seemed less sickly asleep. Almost that a good long rest would cure him of his ills.
When she checked back to Milton, he was staring at her with a matronly concern.
"Are they? You know..."
Milton shrugged. Gabby wasn't sure if he didn't know or didn't want to tell her and she was too proud to ask.
"He's been sick. She was taking care of him. Like she did in the Freelands, stealing that medicine."
Gabby nodded. As long as Michael was happy. It wasn't fair for her to think otherwise, since he was the one dying.
"I got it to work again," he said softly. "But I'm not sure why."
"You did? That's great! And who cares about the reason as long as we can repeat it. It's probably some debuffed art thing, anyway."
Her excitement was cut short when everything rumbled as if a huge fist had hit the desert floor. Gabby looked out the windshield expecting to see a dust cloud. Instead, it appeared they were headed for a crater, one that hadn't been there a moment before.
Gabby opened her mouth to ask if she was seeing things, when the left side of the vehicle jumped up. Gabby yanked on the steering wheel and tried to control the now drunken vehicle.
"What was that?"
The ground exploded not far from the vehicle sending dirt over them. Gabby swerved as two more thumps hit to their right. The terrain had turned rocky and suddenly Gabby had to dodge a few small boulders. They were heading into a valley, not a crater. It was a great depression in the middle of the zone.
Milton was staring out of the right window at something Gabby couldn't see. Suddenly he started shouting: "Go left! Go left!"
A field of boulders blocked her way. She kept driving forward, down a shallow and wide ravine into the valley.
"What's going on?" Avony said weakly as she climbed up from the floor.
A loud thump echoed through the interior and the vehicle shuddered to the right, throwing Avony to the ground. Gabby lost all control. No matter how she turned the steering wheel, nothing changed their momentum. Then the top of the vehicle ripped off like a soda can being opened.
Chapter Eighteen
The air choked them with dust and sand. The view had become obfuscated beyond a few meters. Mouse was screaming in the back. A hand that could have been Avony's grabbed her shoulder.
Boulders flew out of the dust and she jerked the wheel around them as Milton kept screaming "Left! Left!" but the terrain conspired to keep her headed in a slightly rightward and down direction.
Between the screaming and the chaos of the mad dash through the boulder field, the image of the top being ripped off their vehicle kept replaying in her mind.
Except it wasn't "ripped" off. The roof of their vehicle, including the turret, just disappeared behind a fleshy pink blob that fell behind them. Even through the steering wheel, Gabby could feel the heavy thud of a gargantuan creature following them.
Milton was kneeling on the seat, firing his rifle. Every time he reloaded his weapon he kept shaking his head in disappointment. Mouse had stopped screaming and with the others, joined the fire fight.
Gabby wanted so badly to glance behind her and see what was following them, but the bouldery path kept her focused on driving.
"Nothing's getting through," Avony shouted desperately.
Their vehicle hit the valley floor and the boulder field faded away behind them. Gabby turned to the left and away from the creature following them.
"They're gaining on us!" yelled Milton, grabbing Gabby by the shoulder.
"Raiders!" shouted Avony.
"Raiders? What are they doing here?" said Gabby, desperately wanting to look, but knowing that in the dust the terrain could change at any time.
"It's drawing them in," said Milton.
"Drawing?"
At first, Gabby thought she'd misheard them over the gunfire and engine noise. Chancing a moment of inattention, Gabby stood up with her hands still on the steering wheel and looked behind her.
A gargantuan multi-legged creature thundered after them like an unavoidable doom. Born out of a box of art supplies, each leg alternated in a pencil tip or eraser. The body was a blob of paint colors, shimmering in the desert sun, drips flying off as it pounded across the hardpan, leaving a rainbow trail behind it.
Milton raised his rifle and fired. The spider-creature quickly drew a shield with a pencil leg, blocking his assault. Gabby had to swerve as a raider sped closer. As Gabby took one more long look, she watched in horror as it created another vehicle out of thin air with a pencil tip.
"It'll overrun us with its drawings."
Avony fired from the side port and the front tire on the nearest raider blew apart in rubber and dust, causing the vehicle to spin out. Gabby was certain the raider leaning out of the window had a massive paint brush in his hand.
"We need to out pace it. Every time it draws a new raider, it slows down," yelled Michael and then he broke into a fit of coughing brought on by the dust and excitement.
"Keep that thing busy drawing," Gabby told them.
The valley floor was rapidly coming to an end. Gabby would have to speed up the other side and she hoped there was a way through.
Another raider neared them, this one a hovercraft floating above the desert floor. When they hit the boulder field again, it would have an advantage over their wheels. Two scary women with garish tattoos were launching large paint balls with sling shots. When a paint ball hit near the front right tire, it created a mini-crater.
As Gabby hit the other side, she was forced to drive right over a few smaller rocks, throwing everyone around in the back. The hovercraft raider took the opportunity to speed closer and Gabby could do nothing to avoid the two paint balls that hit the side. The right wall crumbled away, leaving them with only three walls and a floor. The only advantage was
it gave the Frags a clear firing line and the hovercraft was promptly blown away.
Four more hovercrafts sped their direction, as Gabby weaved through the boulder field. A few times she cringed when she was forced to drive over a smaller rock, hoping it wouldn't pop a tire and sentence them to a lifetime with the Delvers.
When they escaped the valley, Gabby took a moment to glance behind them again. The gargantuan spider-creature was still only halfway up the valley, but at least a half-dozen raiders were on their trail. The way ahead looked to be flat desert with only the occasional skeletal bush, so Gabby pointed them in that direction.
Without the advantage of the boulder field, the raiders slowly slipped back, but unlike the first group of raiders, these didn't stop. The dust trails followed them across the desert and the spider-creature could be seen from a great distance.
"Check the map," said Avony once they had a safe lead.
The group collectively groaned when they saw the 'X' still planted firmly in the middle of the zone. The other zones had moved around so chaotically that Gabby didn’t recognize the layout from before.
"We're not making any headway," said Avony. "And even if we could get out, we'd still have another five or six zones to get through before the tower."
Michael bent over in another coughing fit that lasted for a minute. He quickly shoved his hands in his pockets when he was done, but it was too late, Gabby had seen the blood on them. Michael was running out of time, and so were the Frags. By the looks on their faces, the others had seen the blood, too. Mouse looked ready to break into tears.
Avony pointed to a long zone with the name "Schrödinger's Bridge" emblazoned on it. It floated on the right side of the map, well away from their vast desert.
"With that zone, we could reach the tower. It's long enough to bypass the others."
Milton winked at Gabby while jabbing his thumb in Avony's direction. "I think she just likes the shape of that zone."
Avony furrowed her brow, scowling at Milton. "Can't you grow up, Millie? You're worse than a guy."
Everyone but Avony started laughing. Even Michael, though he held his chest tightly and grimaced with each chuckle.
Coders Page 10
