Silicon Uprising

by Conor McCarthy

  Jim took the opportunity to come out and shoot at their assailant. After he fired a few bursts another goon further down the hall opened up and drove him back behind the couch.

  While Jim loaded another magazine, a bullet smashed through the disintegrating couch and tore a wound in his abdomen. He rolled away behind an armchair and curled up.

  Jason retreated to the kitchen island.

  The firing stopped. Jason heard a magazine being rammed home and footsteps in the hall.

  More goons were coming.

  A gun appeared from around the corner and fired in short bursts, pinning him behind the counter.

  Jason looked at a reflection in a cupboard door that gleamed with polished perfection. The faint image of a gunman appeared in the mirror finish. While the other goon pinned him down, this one was coming to kill him.

  The man’s comrade was blind-firing too low, hitting the counter but sending nothing over the top. From behind it Jason aimed blind in the direction where he guessed the creeping gunman was, then he stood up and caught him in his sights. The goon’s gun pointed off to one side. Without night vision the man showed no sign of seeing him.

  The goon clicked his flashlight on. It illuminated the refrigerator, bathing the kitchen in a pale glow.

  Still facing the fridge, the goon saw Jason out of the corner of his eye. They looked at each other.

  The man was only following orders. But he’d signed up for this. He worked for torturers, murderers. People who’d sent a nuke to annihilate a town and its citizens.

  His friends had killed Brad.

  Jason squeezed the trigger. Bullets tore holes in the man’s body armor. He went down.

  An explosion went off in the next room. The sound of boots on the tiled floor moved toward the back of the house.

  Jason ran to the corridor entrance, weapon ready.

  A gunman stuck his head out of the bathroom door. Jason squeezed the trigger. One shot struck the doorjamb, and the carbine fell silent.

  Empty magazine.

  The goon stepped out of the doorway as Jason tried to shuffle back behind cover.

  Three shots were followed by a sharp crack of metal on tile, a thump, and a faint “Oof.”

  Jason gasped air into his lungs and checked his body. No damage done. He took a snap look around the corner.

  The goon had slipped and fallen on the water gushing out into the hall from the exploded toilet. His shots had gone into the wall.

  Eddie appeared behind the man, nonchalantly shot him once in the head, and shouted, “Clear.”

  Someone else shouted further away. “Clear.”

  “Clear in here too,” said Jason, trying not to lose it.

  They stood up, guns still held at the ready. Jason went down the hall to the room with the window bars. It had two heavy bolts on the door. He rammed them aside and shoved the door open.

  He found Michael halfway through picking himself up off the floor. The room had some bullet holes, but he was unharmed. He scrambled to his feet.

  “You’re alone in here,” Jason said.

  “There were others. They shot them. All of them, in another room, but I heard it.”

  “Which means they think you’re special,” Jason said.

  Michael held up ink-stained fingers. “Got fingerprinted. No photos. But I’ve never been printed before, so no record exists.”

  “But they’re closing in,” Jason replied.

  “Ha!” Eddie said. “What else is new.”

  “What the hell just happened?” Jason asked. “It was all a blur to me.”

  “A jackboot at the back held us off until I fragged him,” Eddie replied, “then we shot another one up here. Looks like you got one here too.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  They took cover in the living room in case any enemies arrived. Jim’s body lay behind the armchair where he had curled up. The thin woman checked his pulse and shook her head. She scooped some small black seeds out of her pocket and sprinkled them over the corpse, then pulled out a red flower, kissed it, and rested it on his cheek.

  The body of the man Jason had shot lay motionless in a pool of blood on the tiled kitchen floor.

  Jason contemplated it. He was about thirty. Maybe he was paid well. Perhaps he enjoyed the power and status. In that case the man was a fool, but maybe he believed he would find nothing else worth living for.

  Michael seemed to know that Eddie belonged to Crimson Unity. He said, “Thanks for breaking me out. I guess we’re tentative allies for now.”

  Eddie faced him with some tension, like he respected Michael but knew they would never be friends. “We’ll have our disagreements when this is over, but while coolant still flows through Half-Bit, we’re comrades.”

  “I’m sorry Jim didn’t make it,” Jason said.

  “He died believing in the cause and will suffer no more,” Eddie said. “We take heart from it.”

  “Now he’s truly experiencing unity,” the thin woman said.

  The car bomber arrived soon after and reported that he’d left the last gray SUV in flames on the way into town. Jason had never seen him before. He had a hard demeanor and a weathered face, as if he had worked for years outdoors in a freezing climate.

  “Unfortunately a lady walked past right when the timer triggered,” the man said. “Don’t think she made it.”

  “Damn,” Eddie said, “that’s bad PR right after the nuke, but whatever.”

  “Bad for the lady too,” Michael said.

  “Not fighting for ours or yours, therefore one of them.”

  “Lots of random people work for us.”

  Eddie ignored him and waved the sniper into action. Behind a shrub near the driveway he settled in to wait. When the spook from the gray car arrived in a replacement vehicle he’d commandeered, the sniper shot him through the windshield.

  Michael retrieved his car from the three-car garage where the goons had parked it awaiting forensic examination. From a hidden stash he pulled new license plates and a small box of electronics that replaced the car’s RFID with another.

  Eddie handed Jason two small devices. “Tokens of our appreciation. Stink bomb and an incendiary. Jackboots often track us with dogs. The stinker blasts them with gas so noxious they can’t smell a damn thing for hours.”

  “Neat. Thanks.”

  Eddie said, “I don’t know what you guys are up to exactly, but that was fun.”

  “If we get wind of any more targets, are you guys interested?” Jason said.

  “I like targets,” Eddie said, and gave him a key for steg communication.

  Jason and Michael drove a long way around to bypass the burning SUV. Michael received word by steganography of a roundabout route to the highway to avoid roadblocks. From there they had a clear route to the safe house.

  Nineteen

  AS THE SUV’S computer drove him at a perfectly constant speed in the exact center of the highway lane, strange and violent dreams disturbed Jason’s attempts at catching up on sleep. Trapped in dark places, he struggled to see murderers determined to kill him. He rode in the SUV while tarantulas invaded it, but the computer ignored his order to stop. His teeth fell out at his work desk, and then he set off for a meeting with Sam Zarather, only to arrive stark naked.

  He awoke from a fit of terror at being unable to run as a man aimed at him and prepared to fire, the weapon’s built-in flashlight dazzling his eyes. The dawning of first light across the landscape did little to lift the darkness from his mind.

  Six days of struggle. He thought back to the conversation with Susan. An image of dying for the cause and being remembered had energized him then. He’d believed in luck and his power to survive.

  Now he knew his life wasn’t special and he might not see the end of this war. And he was a killer. Theoretical discussions about needing to kill someone bent on causing your death still left you with the truth of your innocence when the discussion ended.

  More sleep, and he awoke to the image
of bullet holes appearing in body armor. Had the guy worked for what he believed was right?

  Michael’s car still drove a hundred yards in front of him at an identical speed. His head didn’t show through the rear window. Probably he was sleeping too. A blue car followed them a quarter mile back. It must have taken an entrance ramp since the last time Jason had looked.

  Jason mulled over what Michael had told him about his captivity. The goons had been waiting for someone named Lowgrave. The mere mention of the name commanded obedience, even awe, among men who normally acted with superiority. Maybe he was the last guy you saw before you died. The type of man who’d extract every scrap of information, every political thought you’d ever had, and who’d leave you begging for the page that already held your confession, composed by an underling who wrote confessions all day.

  The blue car gained on him. That meant one of two things. An illegal modification of its computer firmware, or a law enforcement car. It was a late model, so it uploaded a continuous record of its speed and route to the system. Hard to get away with speed mods while they knew your every move and subsystems cross-referenced the data with traffic cameras.

  It was almost certainly law enforcement.

  Jason ordered the computer to take the next exit. Off the highway, he reached a T-junction and turned toward a residential area. Out the back window he watched the exit ramp.

  The blue car drove down it. Michael’s car continued on the highway. To avoid casting suspicion on him, Jason didn’t call him.

  Jason crawled to the backseat, grabbed an M4 from the hidden compartment, returned to the front, and placed it on the passenger seat. He activated the SUV’s computer firmware mod to remove all speed restrictions.

  On the navigation map, he found a forest on the far side of a populated area. His best chance was to lose the secret police for long enough to arrange a pickup. The SUV’s cover was blown.

  “Maximum speed, next right.” The electric motors whined and the vehicle surged ahead. One percent risk of crash per ten miles’ travel.

  It brought back his childhood memory of the day when automation became mandatory on public roads. “Trust silicon,” the ads said. It turned out that you could back then. Now instead of fearing a threat to his life, he asked for it.

  Near the corner, he checked the rearview mirror. The blue car was moving even faster than before.

  The SUV braked hard, pressing Jason against his seat belt. He planted a hand on the door as the vehicle hauled itself through a right turn into a residential street.

  His pursuers disappeared from view behind commercial buildings on the corner.

  “Next left.”

  The SUV accelerated until houses flashed by in streaks of green, brown, and off-white. It braked hard and turned left before the blue car reached the first corner.

  Jason opened the steganographic app and sent a message for a pickup in the industrial area on the far side of the forest. He left another for Crimson Unity, alerting them to targets in the area.

  The app buried the messages in a hilarious image of a puppy that jumped from a bed and sprawled out on the floor. The CMC had probably already flagged the phone solely by its high speed of movement, but with a little luck, so many people would view the photo that the CMC would have no chance of identifying who accessed it to search for a buried message.

  Jason wound down his window and released a blast of air into his face. Seventy miles per hour on a residential street. Someone might report him, but more units had to be heading his way already.

  He threw the phone out the window into a front yard.

  In the distance behind, the blue car passed by his street. If the goons had their eyes peeled, it would be braking for a U-turn to come back and follow him.

  Jason took the next right and continued until he figured the other car would be nearing the corner where he’d just turned. Then he turned left again toward the forest.

  He reached the back road beside the forest with no sign of the blue car. Thick growth beside that stretch of road prevented him from driving into the woods.

  He could disappear on foot into the trees and program the SUV to lead the goons on a chase out of the neighborhood, but they were too close behind and might spot him before he pulled it off.

  Driving into the forest at speed was a better option.

  Further along it thinned out enough to let him through. He prepared for off-roading by pulling the small steering wheel from a compartment and ramming it into its socket.

  Jason watched the passing houses. For a split second, through two sparse back-to-back yards, he saw a blue car’s rear end disappear fast behind a house. It was traveling on the next street in the same direction as him.

  “U-turn,” he shouted.

  The vehicle braked, then turned until the curb blocked its path.

  Jason acted before it had time to reverse. “Manual control.”

  He grabbed the wheel, planted his foot, and drove up over the curb to complete the turn as the wheels flung turf and soil behind them. He drove back the way he’d come, then down the nearest side street, and stopped short of the first intersection. He looked into the distance over the line of front yards, through trees and shrubbery.

  The blue car turned left toward the forest and disappeared behind the houses.

  Jason accelerated around the corner and sped along the route it had taken, betting that it would return in his direction on the road beside the forest. The goons might spot him if they passed a side street at the same time, but at least this route took him closer to the break in the trees and escape.

  He continued in manual mode so he could react instantly to any goon sighting. He’d have to be in manual to enter the forest anyway.

  He focused intently on the houses as they flashed by, trying to see through to the next street. The first cross street appeared.

  Empty.

  More houses passed in a blur.

  Jason looked down the next cross street. A man stood on the corner at the far end, looking in the direction the blue car should have been approaching from. If he stayed, he could spot Jason entering the forest. Maybe he’d report it, but Jason had no better option than the forest.

  At the third cross street a white car entered the intersection on a collision course. Jason swerved reflexively. The other car’s computer hit the brakes to prevent an impact.

  Jason swung his SUV back into the lane but it began to skid. He corrected, but the right front wheel struck the curb just beyond the corner at the far side of the intersection.

  The front bounced away from the impact, then the SUV went into another skid. He corrected again.

  The vehicle settled under control, but he needed to keep the steering wheel turned left to hold a straight course. The tire that had struck the curb was damaged and seemed to be deflating rapidly.

  By now the white car would have uploaded a record of its sudden stop. Little time remained before the goons received notice and turned onto his street. At least the lady in the white car looked too innocent to be a secret police goon.

  He planted his foot and the damaged vehicle powered ahead under maximum acceleration.

  A turn approached and he braked hard. Stability control kicked in to stop the SUV from pulling left due to the sagging tire. Jason thanked the firmware cracker for leaving that system enabled.

  Left into a side street. Ahead at the forest’s edge lay a stretch of flat ground between two trees, leading into passable terrain. A track, more or less.

  Jason aimed the vehicle at the gap. He braked late, trying to lose some speed and avoid making his entry tracks too obvious.

  On the last inches of pavement he released the brakes and the SUV rolled into the woods.

  The seat belt dug into his left shoulder while the other half of his body lurched toward the roof. Soon the vehicle slowed and settled into a more manageable pace.

  Through the forest he drove, checking the rearview for signs of the blue car until the road became hidd
en by trees.

  He slowed the car further. Off to one side the trees were sparse enough that he could leave the trail and thread his way through thicker undergrowth. He took that option in case the goons figured out his entry point.

  When the forest became too thick to drive any further, he stopped in a secluded spot and switched the SUV off.

  Jason stuffed supplies, night-vision goggles, weapons, ammo, and other equipment into a backpack. After a few paces he stopped and looked back at the SUV. The situation called for a proximity bomb. That was one thing he hadn’t found in the arsenal.

  He took one step away but looked back again. Zarather had set the car up meticulously. Did he anticipate this situation?

  Jason ran to the rear passenger door, yanked it open, and poked a small flashlight into the secret compartment. A small rectangular cover protruded from the side near the back. He popped it open to reveal an unlabeled red button.

  Instant detonation? Pretty hard-core. Not Zarather’s style. Could be a timer or triggered by someone interfering with the vehicle. Unfair if an innocent person found it and got blown up.

  Most likely the goons would find it first. Anyway, an incendiary on a proximity fuse made more sense. It would destroy all evidence but probably spare whoever triggered it, if they were quick. Zarather wouldn’t use a timed fuse because it would announce where he’d been even if no one found his vehicle.

  “Bring it,” Jason said, and pressed the button.

  A computerized voice said, “Proximity destruct will be armed in one minute. Move away from the vehicle.”

  Jason grinned. “Perfect.” Zarather had thought everything out in such detail, and then never got to use it.

  Through the forest Jason ran, panting, pack pressing down hard on his shoulders. He slowed when light from beyond the edge of the forest showed ahead.

  The great rusty shape of an abandoned building loomed through the foliage.

  A few steps closer and he began to examine the area. No cars in the parking lot out front. No sign of people outside or movement in the windows. Foot-high untrodden grass and weeds. Old, faded trash scattered about.