Zero Sum Game

Chapter 33

My plan depended on us being able to find a working car. If we couldn’t do that, we were stuck.

Fortunately, both the van and my clunky sedan turned over on the first try. They were both old cars, so maybe they didn’t have enough electronics to matter. I decided I didn’t care why they still worked, only that they did.

Rio and Checker loaded into the van. “Get him out safe,” I said to Rio, leaning on the open passenger window. He nodded. “How long do you think you’ll need?” I asked Checker.

He was gripping his arms across his chest very tightly. “I don’t know. Traffic might be backed up getting out, but once I can get my hands on a working laptop—two hours. I can finish in two.”

“I can give you that,” I said. “Good luck. It’s all down to you now.”

He shivered. “Cas.”

“Yeah?”

He couldn’t seem to form words.

“Spit it out,” I said. “We’ve got to get going.”

“Tell me you think you can make it,” he said in a low voice, not looking at me. “Tell me you and Arthur aren’t going to die for this.”

That was what was bothering him? Oh. “I’m really good at staying not-dead,” I tried to assure him. “It’s a special talent of mine.”

“Seriously,” said Checker. “Please.”

Maybe he was right to be concerned. After all, I reflected, I was going after an organization that had just taken down an entire metropolitan area to get to me, and I was going to put myself willingly in their crosshairs. Along with a good friend of Checker’s. When I looked at it that way, my plan felt a trifle more daunting.

“Hey,” I said awkwardly. I wasn’t good at being comforting. “I’m really good at what I do. Ask Rio.”

“He doesn’t like your plan, either.”

“Very true,” put in Rio.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to having people worried about my welfare. “Okay, you’re on,” I said.

Checker finally looked up at me, forehead wrinkling in confusion. “On for what?”

“That drinking contest. Once this is over. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, I promise you.”

That got a smile out of him. “Promise me you’ll watch Arthur’s back?”

“I promise. Now get going.” I thumped the hood of the van and headed back over to my clunker as Rio made a precarious three-point turn at the top of the drive and then eased down the slope.

I put my car in gear and crawled down the gravel after them. The indicator lights flickered at me nonsensically, winking on and off. I tried smacking the dashboard, but it didn’t help. Well, I’d be fine as long as the engine stayed working—I had enough gasoline in the back to get me to LA five times over.

As I drew closer to the city, however, the freeway became increasingly clogged until traffic stalled to a standstill. Full dark had fallen, and not everyone’s headlights were working, leaving the lanes a weird play of shadows and vehicle silhouettes. I waited in the car for ten minutes, engine idling, the lines of cars not moving an inch, and then I got out and went to the trunk, where I pulled out a few weapons to sling over my shoulder. The driver in the minivan next to me stared in frozen horror, her face a pale circle in her window, before ducking down over her daughter in the front seat, who kept trying to fight back up so she could see what was making her mother so afraid. I ignored them.

I threaded the strap from a bag of ammo through a couple of gas cans and slung that on my back as well, and checked on the two handguns in the back of my belt. Then I hopped up on the roof of my car and looked out over the parking lot of vehicles. Within minutes I heard a faint rumble and saw the headlamp of a motorcycle threading through the stopped traffic on the other side of the median, headed out of LA. I ran, leaping from car to car, ignoring the squeals and screams of the drivers beneath me as my boots dented their roofs, and hit the pavement just in time for the biker to slam on his brakes. Or rather, her brakes. She squealed to a stop on the fringes of another car’s headlights to reveal a woman in full gear that was head to toe pink, on a pink bike, with a helmet that was black with pink flames.

I swung the Mossberg on my shoulder around and pointed it right at her.

“I need your bike!” I shouted over the roar of the motorcycle’s engine.

She hit the cutoff and raised her gloved hands. I gestured with the shotgun; she kicked frantically at the stand to put it down and dismounted to stumble to the side against a Jeep.

I yanked her pink-trimmed saddlebags off the back and threw them at her; she didn’t bring her hands down quite fast enough to catch them. I swung onto the bike, restarted it, and cut between two tractor-trailers to turn the bike and start back toward LA, going the wrong way on the stopped freeway. I didn’t bother stealing her helmet; the police had more important things to worry about right now.

In the side mirror, I could see the pink biker staring after me, a gawky, bright statue in the Jeep’s headlights, exhaust fumes fogging her image.

I faced a long haul back to the Westside. The 10 was stopped all the way in, and when I headed down the shoulder of an on ramp, I hit gridlocked streets of half-deserted vehicles. With no helmet on, I could hear shouts and crashes over the motorcycle’s engine, and sirens sounded from at least three directions. Los Angeles was not famous for the cooperation of its residents in times of trouble. The looting had already started.

The city was black. It was eerie: all the streetlights loomed dead and silent, every building a blank, dark silhouette in the night. Many of the gridlocked cars had been deserted, and the residents who had taken to the streets had become the monsters who came out at such times. One hoodlum ran down the pavement shouting, smashing a crowbar through car windows. He ran straight at my bike, swinging as I barreled between the stopped vehicles, hollering a wordless berserker cry. I took my left hand off the clutch, rolled the throttle all the way open with my right, drew one of the handguns, and shot him in the head. He crumpled in the tight space between the cars, and I swerved around his falling body, the math giving me just enough room.

I was two streets away from the apartment where we’d left Arthur. The final block was bathed in the pulsing red of police lights, their deadly brightness reflecting off pavement still wet from the recent rain. I could see officers with nightsticks out, shouting and trying to corral belligerent rioters. None of them paid the least bit of attention to me. I pulled the bike over, raced up the stairs to the flat, and burst through the door to find it dark and empty. Arthur wasn’t there.

With no working cell phone, I had no way of contacting him. But despite my lack of observational prowess when it came to the human condition, in the short time I’d known Arthur I had figured out a few things about him, and I had a sneaking suspicion that in a time of crisis he’d try to find somewhere to be of help.

After that, it didn’t take long to find him. I just went to the nearest ER.

The place was chaos. The whole ER was a mess of screaming, jostling, crying people who had swarmed the hospital entirely until they swelled out onto the sidewalk in a pawing, pleading mass. The hospital was as dark as everywhere else—apparently their generators had been fried—but people had dug up working flashlights and some battery-operated lanterns, and I saw some of the nurses battling the commotion with glowsticks around their necks.

Tresting’s composite might still be on police most-wanted boards, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. He had thrown himself into the crisis with authority, and was currently rescuing the ER staff from drowning by being a booming voice of order—keeping people neatly triaged, calming screaming voices, soothing hysterical parents. The staff was going to hate me for pulling him out.

I pushed through the mob of bleeding and coughing people. “Tresting!”

He turned, and his eyes went wide. “Russell! Get those out of here!”

I had forgotten I still had several large firearms slung on my back. I glanced to either side to find a circle of space had formed around me, people shrinking back and staring. The dancing flashlight beams threw the pushing crowd into a seething knot of flesh and shadows, its humanity hidden in the darkness. I grabbed Arthur’s arm and hauled. “Come on, then.”

Fortunately, Los Angeles had other things on its mind than a private citizen who wasn’t currently using the firearms she was carrying, and nobody tried to stop us from heading anonymously back out into the night.

“Russell, what the hell is going on?” demanded Tresting as I hurried him along the sidewalk. “Didn’t work, did it? That thing you were trying to swing with the damn flash drive?”

“We started,” I said. “Long story short, Pithica caught wind of it and decided the quick way to stop us was to knock out every computer in LA.”

“They did this…?” Arthur’s mouth dropped open. He shook himself. “Thought you left LA. Didn’t think I’d see you back here.”

“Well, we didn’t want you to know—Pithica brainwashing and all that—but LA’s a big enough city to disappear into.”

He nodded, not questioning it. “Checker okay?”

“Rio’s looking after him.”

Tresting’s expression soured.

“Hey, he’s safer than anyone I know that way,” I said severely. “Look, I’ve got to finish getting our program out. I need your help.”

“Thought I was a liability,” he said.

“Desperate times, desperate measures. I need backup.”

It was fortunate he didn’t know me better. He didn’t question that either. Instead he just took a breath and nodded, back in crisis mode. “Where to?”

“Los Angeles Air Force Base,” I said, leading him around the corner at a quick trot. “They’re the people most likely to have a working computer still. Hop on.” We had reached the pink bike.

Arthur looked from me to the bike. “Your color.”

“We have working transportation; don’t knock it.” I unslung the Mossberg and handed it to him along with a pistol. “Warn me before letting loose with the shotgun.”

“Will do,” he said, accepting the weapons and climbing up behind me on the bike.

“And hang on,” I instructed. “I’m planning to take the corners a little tight.”

We weren’t far from LAX and the Air Force base. At least not the way I rode. As soon as the green airport signage began popping up and wallpapering the streets, I pulled over to ditch the bike.

“What’s the plan?” asked Arthur, shaking his legs out. He didn’t otherwise comment on my driving.

“Break in,” I said. “Find working equipment. Finish the job. Elegant in its simplicity, isn’t it?”

“What about all this?” Arthur swept a hand toward the darkened, violent streets. “Can we fix it? Restore the power?”

“Power’s not the problem,” I said. “It’s an EMP. They fried every circuit board from here to Phoenix. Anything run by a chip will have to be replaced before it’ll work again, even after the power comes back on line.”

He seemed to get it. “That’s why the cell phones are out, too.”

“Yeah. I’m guessing landlines might still work as long as they weren’t fancy cordless phones with a power connection—well, assuming something somewhere along the way in the telephone network hasn’t started being run by a computer. And shortwave radio would still work.” That was the sum total of Checker’s and my combined knowledge and guesses about post-apocalyptic emergency communication. I hoped the base would have one or the other. And I hoped Arthur was listening to me.

“I can’t believe Dawna—” His mouth twisted, and he ran a hand over his face.

It was exactly the opening I needed. “Well, she’ll have more than enough to occupy her soon. Rio managed to poison her, you know. Back when we were all captured. A bad poison, too. She’ll be starting to feel the effects any time now and be dead in two days. Christ, what a relief.” I bit my lip. I was talking too much, but then, I’m a very bad liar.

Arthur didn’t seem to notice. He went still. “What?”

“Yeah. There’s an antidote, but once she starts showing symptoms, it’ll be too late. Come on, let’s head.” I kept him in the corner of my eye, wondering if he would turn the shotgun on me, demand the antidote to take back to Dawna. But he didn’t seem to be that far gone.

Hopefully he’d be just far gone enough to warn her.