Herculanium (38 page)

Anticipating a split-second gap between two lane-changing cars, Jayna dug her foot on the accelerator pedal and sped forward. She timed her move perfectly, snaking the cab between the two cars without slowing down. The moment the car breezed through the toll booth, alarm claxons immediately went off, lighting the arches in blood red.

“Just as I thought,” she said with laughing exhilaration. “They canceled my military pass. I used to be able to drive through for free. I guess they don’t want renegades running loose with their access cards.”

Preston shook his head. “I swear, you are fucking nuts.”

Jayna looked deep into her rearview mirror. Two rows of flashing red lights were shimmering about a mile behind them; one was stationary, the other becoming increasingly larger and brighter.

“First chance you get, I want you to pull this car over and let me out.” Preston waved his finger at her to accentuate his point. “I’ll take my chances and throw myself at the mercy of the court.”

“You’re daft, man,” she said. “Combattra agents just tried to kidnap you because they think you’re carrying the next plague. You also embarrassed the two highest-ranking officials in the entire sports military. Yours is going to be the most public disappearance the world will ever know. What mercy are you looking for? And from whom? Those people chasing us? Those people who just tried to kill you?”

Preston looked down and cupped his hands over his eyes. Things were happening much too fast for him to think straight. Exactly as it was in the beginning, his life and its direction were not his own to decide.

The spires were the first to break the horizon, followed by the familiar suspension frame and cabling. But unlike the Golden Gate Bridge that Preston was familiar with, this structure kept rising higher and higher in the night sky the closer they came. Multiple lanes bisected the entrance where the road went over the open ocean, connecting to several vertical decks that elevated the colossal monument upward through a halo of seagulls basking in its light. The bridge resembled a magnificent span skyscraper tipped fully on its side, resting on ornate columns and made up of infinite pinpricks of streaming light and color.

Preston gasped out loud, leaning forward in his chair and stretching his neck up to fully see the structure. “Oh, my God! Is that the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“That’s the Golden Gate
Tower
Bridge, dear,” she corrected. “It’s been worked over quite a bit since your time, I imagine. It’s not as boring anymore.”

“Are we going to drive through it?” Preston hadn’t blinked since first sighting the bridge at the tip of the freeway.

“We need to merge onto the third deck. We have to catch the Olympus exit going towards downtown. From there, I know some friends who’ll help us disappear for a bit.”

They entered a brief tunnel of light before emerging on the bridge, and the Bay opened itself around them. The cab’s tires immediately began to hum as it drove over the bridge’s distinct floor plating, creating an almost mechanical backdrop of sound. Massive columns, girders and screens that composed each of the five decks sped by in a blur, streaming into a continuous undulating pattern that stretched the visible length of the bridge. In-between the blurs of metal and cabling was a view of the open ocean, black as ink and equally as infinite. Only the glittering view of opposite peninsulas gave the experience any kind of placement in time and space. Cars merged in and out of traffic from seemingly endless on-ramps and exits that connected all five decks, making the thought of even one accident the most horrifying possibility while driving.

Preston rolled down his window and looked up. “You can see the cars on the road above us through the screen floors,” he yelled into the howling wind. “That’s incredible!”

“Get back in here,” said Jayna, grabbing him by his shirt and jerking him inside. “There could be agents all around us for all we know. Don’t ever do that again.”

Preston quickly brushed off her hand and straightened the wrinkles on his shirt. Her nails dug deep into his skin. “Ease off there, now,” he said. “All you have to do is tell me. You’ve been pulling that stunt with me since I got here, and I ain’t putting up with that shit anymore.”

“Alright, I’m sorry,” she said out loud. “I’m just getting really nervous now. I don’t scare that easily, and I can kill without batting an eyelash. But with all these cars here, there’s no way to tell who might be gunning after us here.”

“What exit did you say we have to get off on?” Preston kept his eyes glued to the countless signs lining the bridge curb.

“Olympus. It should be coming up any moment now.”

“It’s just up ahead. That sign we just passed said one of the off-ramps to an upper deck is closed due to construction.”

“That should be Deck 5. I think one of its segments is being replaced. That explains all this bloody traffic. Luckily, that’s not where we’re going.”

She checked her mirrors one last time before merging into the lane leading to Olympus. Preston barely had time to secure himself in his seat when the car switched several lanes over with a flick of Jayna’s hand. He quickly found himself sprawled against the passenger-side window.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said, shaking his head.

“Aren’t you used to that by now? I thought you were a bloody astronaut.”

The Olympus off-ramp finally emerged in the distance, clogged with cars trying to merge in and exit. Across the lanes from it was the access ramp to the Deck 5 level, closed from construction and secured with pylons and blinking barricades. With cars bottlenecking around the exits, it wasn’t unusual for motorists to sneak in front of other vehicles to gain advantage in positioning. Jayna just wasn’t used to cars cutting her off and then reducing their speed by half, almost coming to a full stop. She stomped her heel on the decelerator pedal in reflex, nearly sending her and Preston through the windshield in an uncontrollable lurch. She could feel the braking system striping the road and grinding beneath the cab. She gripped the steering wheel and crushed it like a wet sponge, instinctively maneuvering the car to avoid collision.

Preston coughed and held his chest, rubbing where the shoulder harness clamped onto his body like a vice. “What the hell was that?”

“This fucking bastard cut me off and then decided to slow down. We almost crashed into him full-tilt. If we weren’t in such a rush, I’d get me gun and teach him a lesson.”

Had those words come from anyone else, Preston would’ve just laughed it off as a joke. But after seeing his partner in action numerous times before, he knew better than to assume anything she said was made in jest.

He barely had time to react to her when another car slammed them from behind, sending the cab careening again into the lead car. Jayna kept her composure, keeping her hands on the steering wheel and maintaining a defensive straight line. Both the lead and the rear cars moved in unison, containing the cab and controlling its speed and trajectory. Two other cars emerged from the opposite lanes, flanking them and completing a mobile cross pattern around the cab. Flickering police lights suddenly erupted around them, flooding the interior with a flickering fog of red. The nearby traffic immediately fell back, giving the activity a wide berth.

“We’re boxed in,” yelled Jayna as she swiveled her head left and right. “They’ve finally caught up with us. Hold on and try to ride this out. I’m going to steer us into our exit.”

She gripped the steering wheel as hard as she could and torqued it flush right, leaning her weight onto the dashboard and into the direction of the off-ramp. The passenger-side car stood its ground and actually speared itself deeper into Preston’s door, preventing them from slipping through. With the rear car pushing the cab into the lead cab’s posterior, and the flanking cars acting as stabilizers, the cross grindingly veered away from the Olympus exit and instead headed towards the Deck 5 access ramp.

“Preston, you know how to fire a gun, don’t you?”

He stared back, smiling at her beautiful accent and her outrageous request. “Yeah, why?”

“Retrieve the gun from me pocket. On my mark, take out the guy to our right. We have to time this correctly.”

“I’m not going to kill him. I’ll kick his ass, but I won’t kill him.”

“You picked a fine time to get squeamish on me, mate.”

Jayna alternately stomped her foot on the accelerator and brake pedals, trying to do anything to impede their trajectory. But the cars adjusted accordingly, matching her attempts and maintaining their formation. As the cars began accelerating towards the ramp, the lead car suddenly sped forward and peeled away to the right. The two flanking cars dropped back, leaving the rear car to push-bump the cab onto the ramp before screeching away back to the main freeway strip.

The barricaded Deck 5 off-ramp came up like a solid wall, instantly splintering upon impact and sending metal and warning lights raining onto the pavement. Preston and Jayna both held on to the dashboard and ducked their heads down, crouching in their seats to absorb the impact. The two then quickly found themselves driving on an empty road headed up a steep hill, with a pitch angle almost akin to the start of a rollercoaster ride. Had it not been for the towering highway lamps, they would have surely crashed against the streaming guardrail or impaled themselves into mounds of broken cement, construction cones and open girders. Flocks of seagulls, iridescent from their headlights, flew out of the way in waves.

Deck 5 was the highest level on the Golden Gate Tower Bridge, open-air with the yawning sky as its ceiling. Upon reaching the apex of the off-ramp and then leveling off, their cab was situated high above the ocean, with a spectacular view of the city and the surrounding peninsula.

Preston gasped, both frightened and exhilarated at the same time. He felt like he was back in space again, still in awe of what humanity was capable of building. Jayna didn’t afford herself the luxury of being awestruck, however; she kept her focus intact, continuously analyzing their situation and all possible alternatives for their escape. They had already missed their target exit and were speeding through a freeway under construction. To her last breath, she was going to fight.

“Holy shit,” yelled Preston, digging both his feet below the dashboard as if he had his own set of brake pedals. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, horrifyingly readying himself for the freefall and impact.

A stray thought occupied Jayna just long enough for her to turn her eyes away from the road. The pavement before them was flickering like windswept candlelight, quite unusual for a supposedly solid structure. When she regained her focus, she instinctively leaned forward and nearly stood on top of the braking pedal. The cab half-spun sideways and dragged itself to an abrupt, screeching halt.

Preston fell out of the cab when he opened the door, still trying to regain his balance. Jayna slowly swung her door open and approached the car’s headlights. Deck 4 was alive and well below them, streaming with countless headlights and other traffic. About a hundred yards of deck was missing, presumably one of the sections still in need of repair. The other half of the road across the chasm stared quietly back. Had she been a half-second off in reflex, the two would’ve quickly found themselves diving headfirst in the middle of the traffic below.

Preston was staring at yet another wonder in the future. “This close,” he said, staring below and pinching his forefinger and thumb together. “We came
this
close to biting it again.”

Jayna shook her head and sighed. “The operative word there is ‘again,’ mate. I think we’d both start getting used to it. Watch your step. It’s awfully windy up here. I’m surprised more cars don’t come flying off this level from the wind gusts. No wonder the birds like it up here.”

Preston raised his foot and looked at the moist soles of his shoes. “Yeah, so much that they crap all over it. If the cars don’t come flying off from the wind, then they’ll slide off from all the bird shit.”

“I want options,” she demanded, walking to the rear of the car and surveying the empty freeway. Instinctively, she retrieved her gun and her phone from her purse and inserted them into her pant pockets. “We can’t go forward, so maybe we should we go back? We can re-trace our steps and merge back on to the freeway somehow.”

“Or maybe we can scale the bridge down to the first deck and walk to the other side,” said Preston, jokingly. “Or maybe, if we time it right, we can jump off the bridge, pray to God that we’ll land on something soft, commandeer a boat and head to open sea.”

“Not bad,” she said, giving the suggestions serious consideration. “Kind of risky, but plausible.”

“Are you kidding me? That was a joke; just like running from these people, like you killing those agents, like you and me stuck on this bridge with nowhere to go. It should’ve never gotten this far. Why don’t you give up? Why are you doing all this?”

“This is not about me, this is about you. I am protecting you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Since I was assigned to you, all you’ve ever talked about is how you had no control over your life; that everyone was making decisions for you. In the beginning that was true, and I helped make it so. But now that you’re a fugitive against these people, these same people who want you dead, you now have a choice whether to live or die. I’ve given you back that choice. When they came to kill you, I made sure it was on your terms; when, where, and if. Whether or not it was in your own time or even now, the choice—the direction of your life—had always been yours. Whether you understood it nor not, I was following a higher conscience than my own—yours.”

“Oh, my God,” he said, looking out into the city. “Maybe I
was
just afraid to make a choice. Maybe I just gave up without even trying. Every day since waking up, I’ve been terrified of this place, of all of you.”

“And with good reason. Maybe we’re the monsters of your nightmares. Maybe we’re the things that you’re most afraid of. You’re afraid of the unknown, and your place within the unknown.”

Preston squinted his eyes, trying in vain to contain a volley of tears about to get released. He stared at the skyscraper billboards across the darkness to adjust his vision. In seeming slow motion, the frozen images he had seen earlier of himself and Jayna had morphed into an aerial live-camera feed of them both on the Deck 5 freeway. He turned his head to where he thought the camera was positioned, and he saw a black helicopter silently hovering in the distance.

“Jayna…?”

“Way ahead of you, sport.” Standing at an angle to the chopper, she positioned her hand to be able to draw her gun at a second’s notice.

“We’re out of options here,” said Preston, shifting his gaze back and forth from the distant billboards and the helicopter. “I don’t think we can go any further.”

“There are always options, my dear.”

As if on cue, two massive gunships rose from opposite sides of the bridge, breaking the stillness and carpeting the highway with spotlights and targeting beams. The multi-bladed helicopters began orbiting the top deck, circling just beyond the span cabling and glowing like grotesque, iridescent fireflies.

“Oh, damn,” said Preston, cupping his ears from the high-pitched shrill of the gunships’ rotor-blades. “This is not fucking good.”

Jayna gave an exhausted sigh and pulled out her gun. She pressed herself in front of Preston and observed the ships like a lioness stalking her prey.

A shimmering wall of red erupted on both sides of the deck, lighting their respective horizons in a ghoulish sunset made up of military police cars and ambulances. Within several heart-pounding moments, the convoys from opposite sides screeched to a halt, its soldiers setting-up barricades for their snipers to take position. Armored ambulances brought up the rear, themselves another defensive wall. The soldiers across the chasm from the cab erected their barriers nearly to the edge of the unfinished deck, while those on Preston’s side positioned themselves defensively about a hundred yards distant from the cab’s edge. It was a strategic, living suture around a wound that the military was now ready to close.