Where is that postie though? If he can be relied on for anything it's sprinting through his round so he can get to the pub before lunchtime. You can hear him thundering up and down your stairs. For once I want to hear him thundering up and down my bloody stairs. Today's the day the ACME CarbonLite HomeSniper Rifle kit arrives. Soon as I unpack that baby, fit it up to the Sniperscope and swing it ostentatiously in his direction victory is mine.
The camera view still shows an empty street. Funny for this time in the morning. No cars, no pedestrians, no postie...
A terrible, terrible thought.
What if I've been hacked? Not my PC itself of course, that's ACME'd up to its metaphorical eyeballs, but what if He's somehow time-delayed the feeds from my cameras? I'm sure I ignored some ACME promo pop-up about that. Big flashing green thing with a cartoon of an asphyxiating PC.
And if I'm not looking at realtime events...
I sprint from the bedroom into the living room, and rip open the curtain.
Just in time to see the postman dying from a single gunshot, a halo of blood pooling round his surgically eggshelled skull. I know the work of the ACME CarbonLite HomeSniper Rifle in the hands of one who's had some time to practice with it. I've seen the promo videos.
Shocked, I can only stare. A barrage of camera flash from across the road illuminates my outrage. My humiliation will be all over His newsgroup by the time I close the curtain.
This means war.
Copyright © 2009 Neil Williamson
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[Back to Table of Contents]
MILES TO ISENGARD—Leah Bobet
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Illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe
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Leah Bobet lives and works in a little apartment in Toronto built on consecrated ground. Her fiction has appeared most recently in Strange Horizons, The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy and Clockwork Phoenix, and her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling and Pushcart Prizes. She is, like many, working on a novel. This is her first appearance in Interzone.
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We pull out midmorning, elbow to tooth in the big ol’ rented semi, and beat hell down the old country switchback roads until we hit it. Dancer don't even notice until Chez yells stop the truck! and yanks the steering wheel over, and there it is, a little kid lying in a heap on the pitted-down blacktop road.
"Aw, shit,” says Priest from the sleeper door, and dives a hand into his pocket for a cigarette.
Maurice ratchets up the trailer door and looks out, rifle in hand, eyes so big I can see the whites of them even from the front of the truck cab. “S'alright,” I call out to him, walking casual. “Just hit something."
"Huh,” Maurice coughs, and slides back into the darkness of the trailer, not putting down the gun. It's almost time he gets relieved of the trailer watch, the hard watch: making sure that if the checkpoints stop us, they don't take away the bomb.
"He's alive,” Chezley says, holding the little body flat on her outstretched arms. There's blood coming from its forehead where the gravel's pounded in: the kid flew instead of crunching under the wheels like a squirrel. Thank god for small mercies.
"I don't think you're supposed to pick them up like that,” Priest says, and I start over to where Chez has him chest-flat on her arms. I took CPR back when I was a kid learning swimming; I can remember A for airway, B for breathing, not much of the rest. If the kid's not breathing, though—we'll cross that bridge when we get there. There's a pulse, that much's for certain when I press fingers against his sweaty neck, and then reach out awkward to feel down the arms and legs for breaks.
Nobody here's a doctor: doctors wouldn't hold with what we're doing. So I sorta do my best.
"I think the right arm's broken,” I say to Chez, avoiding even looking at where Dancer is pacing and fidgeting by the cooling cab of the truck. “Gonna have to bring him in back and wrap it."
"Should just leave it,” Dancer mutters over the lip of a plastic water bottle as we bring the kid into the cab. “We don't have the supplies for this."
Chez lays it down in the bottom sleeper bunk delicate as a land mine. “First aid kit's on the wall."
Dancer gets back in front and yanks the parking brake. The truck hisses, shunting steam through its teeth. I slide into the passenger side and pick up the marked, creased, circled maps.
Over the highway, in the distance, lie the faintest outline of mountains.
* * * *
Doctors would've sold us to the highway watch all the way back in New Mexico, back when we first got the bomb. That's why we didn't bring any: not doctors, not lawyers who could've stared down the checkpoint officers with all sorts of legalese, not anyone who had anything to lose. We didn't know that kind back in Marion anyway: the only rich people in Marion were the government scientists, and they wouldn't drink the places we drink. They kept their kids away from ours on holidays.
I tended bar at Goerke's and picked up kitchen shifts when one of the two cooks called sick. Dancer fixed trucks with her cousin down at the stop at the edge of the highway. Chezley was a schoolteacher in the overfull county school, and the only one of us five who might have done something with herself.
Before she came into Goerke's and said hey Sammy, wanna save the world?
* * * *
I sit my watch from eight o'clock ‘til two, with the rifle across my lap and a book tilted on top of it. Dancer would shit bricks if she knew I was reading on watch, but the closer we get, the more we all do it. There's something ‘bout sitting alone in a semi-trailer with a strapped-down nuke—no, not something. We all know exactly what thing, and we all got our ways of hiding from it.
Evening, Sam, says the bomb in its casings, knowing I've been thinking of it instead of reading ‘bout a girl and a bull. I have a red little button. It's small and round and neat.
Talking back just makes it worse when it comes to the bomb. I stick my nose harder into the book and listen to it, mouth the curves of the vowels of the dim words on the page.
They'll catch you, it whispers, on a beat like a skipping game, and whistles ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ to the rhythm of the wheels.
It's only eleven-thirty. I stand up and rap on the back of the trailer, three long, three short, three long. The truck slows down, pulls off to the side, and Priest opens up the trailer outlined by muzzy highway streetlights. “What?"
"Need a relief,” I tell him, sucking in the cool fresh country air. It leaks through, this far from cities. You smell green through the seams of the windows.
He spits and puts out his butt on the tarmac. There's no smoking ‘round the bomb. “All right, but that means you watch the kid instead."
I close my book and toe it under tied-down canvas; a box of instant noodle cups, wrapped and stacked to keep us moving in case our pictures have got out to the truck stops. “How is he?” I ask him, to cover up the move.
"Howling.” Priest hops into the truck, already muttering under his breath. I hop out into the clean, cool night.
The kid is howling when I hit the cab, loud enough to hear with the windows down from halfway across the road. Dancer's down in the ditch taking a piss, and her jaw is the hard lock of a drunk who's about to throw a sloppy, vicious punch.
"Shit, Maur, you give him some aspirin?” I shove past Maurice who's sitting in the driver's, maps spread across his knees like napkins. The wailing rises a little and pauses, then scoots back down low like a siren.
"Where the fuck did I grow more hands to give people aspirin?” he says, and yanks the map closer to the onboard light. “We're not gonna make Provo tonight."
"Fine,” I say, and push for the sleeper. In the top bunk, Chezley rolls over and tightens the limp pillow over her ears.
"Hey,” I say quiet when I perch down on the bottom bunk, next to the kid who's still fucking screaming. “Hey there now, calm down."
Talking
to kids is like talking to drunks: you just gotta be slow and careful, use small words, not make sudden moves. He looks up at me with sticky fifth-beer eyes, not understanding shit. “Hola?” I try, and he doesn't blink. It's gotta be the pain, or we've picked us up a feral and words won't mean a damned thing.
I fumble through the first aid kit while the door slams and Maurice swings us into the right lane, into the endless flicker of light-dark-light that's interstate driving at night. A passing set of headlights illuminates ibuprofen after what feels like three hours in the hole with the bomb, and I drop one in his open mouth before he can finish the wail. It's too much—it's gotta be too much for a kid that scrawny—but it puts him out like a light, still breathing, and the foldaway bunk creaks as Chezley finally relaxes on the shitty mattress and breathes like sleep.
I check him out again once it's quiet: skinny wrists, skinny fingers, dirt on the legs that can't all be from the sticky gravel skid he took along the road when the truck's fat grille made contact. Thank god kids bounce, I say to myself, and run fingers up the little neck, looking for cuts and bruises.
There's a beep when I touch the chip. When it comes to life, washing a dirty red glow across the pillow.
It doesn't turn off when I touch it again.
"Guys,” I say, poking my head into the cab compartment, fighting the bump and rush of motion. “We got a problem. This one's not a stray."
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We can't afford to pull over again, not for more than a piss break or a shift change. But we huddle together in the cab and while Maur's still driving, we have us a council of war.
Dancer prods at the chip again, too hard against the kid's floppy little neck. “Fuck, I don't know,” she says, letting him down with a hell of a lot more care than she would've otherwise. “I know engines, not this."
"Kid soldier,” Maurice says, quiet at the wheel, not looking back. “They had ‘em when I shipped out. Run ‘em in ahead of a line. Once the enemy fills ‘em with bullets their heart stops, they explode."
"Jesus,” Chez whistles, hands fidgeting in her lap. She's looking at the kid like I am. He can't be more than ten.
"That's it. We gotta get him out of here,” says Dancer, tapping her foot on the floor of the cab. “We drop him off in Provo, they'll fix him up there."
"They'll come after him,” Chez breaks in. I can barely see the lines of her nose and cheek in the dark. “And if he tries to run again and dies it'll take people out right in the middle of the city."
"They won't come looking for him—"
"Maurice, how much is that chip worth?"
"They'll look,” he says with finality, and changes lanes.
"Okay, well here,” Dancer says. “Now. Pull over."
Chez stands up.
"I ain't leavin’ no child on the roadside to die,” Maur says evenly, and tightens his big hands on the wheel.
"Priest won't either,” I say into the quiet. It doesn't take a big explosion to start the reaction in a nuke going. Just one in the right place. I'm no nuclear scientist—we didn't bring those along either—but I sure bet the gas tank of a truck, going up all around that whispering uranium core, would find itself the right place.
"We could nuke the whole fucking Southwest—” Dancer stands up, and Maur shoves her down into the seat, away from the rearview, away from the windshield.
"Look,” he says. “We get the kid to town somewhere. We see how it goes from there,” and then he rolls down the window, and thick summer air hits me in the face, still cooler than the air is in the cab with all our stinking and fighting. I lean my head out the truck window like my momma always told me not to do and let the speed make me dizzy, let it turn my whole world upside down.
"Need something to eat,” Maur says after a while, and downshifts us onto the grubby shoulder so Chez can take the driver's seat.
"You wanna keep the kid,” I say, settling down beside her on the passenger seat once Maur's ducked into the sleeper for an instant soup. Maps crunch beneath my leg and I pull one carefully out from under.
She's silent for a minute. Then: “I want to find a newspaper. There's got to be something too far for people. They can't be wiring kids up in public and having them be okay with it."
"Dancer's right,” I tell her, after my own long silence. “If he dies it could set off the nuke."
"We don't know that."
"We know it takes an explosion. There's gas in the back and the tank,” I tell her, and she sets her jaw and shifts the truck clumsily into the middle lane, away from the spotty, broken streetlights.
We drive.
I thought I was in love with Chezley once, back when we were kids in the tiny townie high school they tore down when the scientists moved in. I cornered her on prom night and asked her to be my girl. She laughed, but not meanly, and went off to UNT instead. That was smarter for both of us, but I still like to watch the lines of her face sideways when she drives at night.
I keep the maps out in case she catches me. I plot our route past Provo, and watch the exits and beat-up signs, counting miles in my head. Fifty miles to Provo. Two hundred and nine point six to Idaho. Eleven hundred-thirty-six, barring detours and snack breaks and shift change, to the mountain.
Eleven hundred-thirty-five. Eleven hundred-thirty-four.
Maur's grumbling chewing sounds turn to snores in the sleeper. Dancer's bunched up beside him, face to the wall, stiff and probably pissed at having to share the top bunk instead of stretching out on the bottom. We turn off the highway twenty miles out of Provo and take the long way around to dodge the checkpoint, rattling along silent suburban roads that're mostly evacuated and going to weeds. Lawns spill out onto driveways in the dark. I roll the window up tight until we're around and tracing back routes to cross the Idaho border.
I fall asleep somewhere before the crossing and wake up with the sunrise coming in, burning my right arm hot where I've pillowed it on the window. Chezley's twitching a map out from under my other arm, crumpled and yanking at every little hair. “Mm,” I grunt. Rub my eyes. “Where are we?"
"We oughta check on Priest,” she says instead of an answer, and downshifts the engine into silence.
There's a bird or two calling in the browned-out countryside, yelling the sun up over a few curled-up trees. I take my piss into a roadside field and then follow Chez around the back to the trailer, covering my mouth against the devil and mosquitoes when I yawn. She bangs on it once, twice, before we haul the trailer door up high and fold down the little ramp that Dancer hinged into the truck. “Morning, Priest,” I tell him while I wait to get used to the dark.
The bomb wolf-whistles us good morning. I loosen my fists and follow Chez up the ramp into the trailer.
Priest's rolled up on the floor near the crates of food, halfway between the bomb and the gas. The bomb can't set off the gas, but there's something about things meant to explode that makes you not want to load them too close together. He's got his hand around the gun, loose and sleepy.
"Hey, Priest,” I say, and dig into the big case of water to wash the nasty sleep-taste out of my mouth.
I don't see the red on the floor until I turn back around.
"Priest?” Chez says one more time, and her voice is shaking, ‘cause we both no it won't do no good.
He doesn't move.
We didn't hear it, with all our arguin'. The sound of a shot going up into a mouth, through the soft bits of your skull and putting out a brain not twenty-five feet away. I lean forward and touch his outstretched hand. It gives like old chicken as his finger falls away from the trigger.
Bang bang, says the bomb. You're dead.
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There's nothing to do about it. We wrap Priest up in a grey emergency blanket and wipe the floor best we can, and then gas up the truck and get on our way. Nobody damn well wants to sit bomb watch now, so we double it. Maur and I go in the two of us and lean against the trailer wall, looking away from the covered hump behind the gas cans. We put the gun u
p front by the door. It was stupid to think that we could stop a National Security checkpoint with one crappy old hunting rifle. Dancer and Chez close us in after a silent rationing-out of granola bars, fruit leather, instant noodles and ginkgo drinks, and the engine starts up again a minute later.
"The girls say where we're at?” I ask him when the food's finished up. There's no point in talking to Maur when there's still food to be had.
"Outside o’ Boise,” he grumbles. It's hard to hear. I keep myself from leaning forward at him.
"We should've been to Oregon by now."
"Yeah,” he says, still mumble-quiet. “Looks like we had a wrong turn."
"Shit,” I just let out, knowing full well it's my own fault for falling asleep at the maps, not knowing why the hell Chez didn't just wake me up again.
It's a day and a half trip to the mountain, if you take the interstates. Two and a half thousand miles. I sat down with Maur and plotted it out on paper maps in the back room of the bar after close time, so they wouldn't catch our looking on the internet ones.
That's if you take the interstates, though, where the checkpoints are. Where they pat you down and fingerprint-smudge your ID and stomp through truck trailers to count the goods.
The way we're going, it's thirty-five-hundred miles to the mountain, along the backroads, around the armed guards, taking dusty local highways almost all the way there. Almost two days straight of driving, so long as we never stop. We figured it'd take more like three, what with stopping to piss and change shifts and stretch out so nobody's foot cramps on the gas. That was when we thought we could sleep in the trailer. Before the bomb started talking.
We didn't plan how we might cover shifts with only four. Or how much heat we might draw if we lost time having to backtrack.
"Yeah,” he repeats, not sounding like he's blaming, and slumps back into the darkness against the wall. A thin line of light peeks out at us where the door and the bed don't quite meet, and I wish we'd thought to bring more than a workman's flashlight barely big enough for reading. “Think the word's out?” he says even softer, after a minute, and I sit real still because I have this intuition that he's only talking this talk because it's dark enough we can't see the other's face.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #220 Page 10
