Take the All-Mart! (19 page)

Bernice rifled around in the glove compartment, taking care not to spill anything out, until she found the half-empty box of .85s. She tossed it to Trip, then kept rooting around in the glove box. “What about for me? I’m not seeing any shells.”

“Rudy,” Trip said, “share with the nice lady.”

Grimacing, Rudy shrugged his bandolier over his head and handed it to Bernice.

The
Wound
sped through another hovel and out of Origin City proper. Ahead of them was clear concrete all the way to where the merchandise racks started up, maybe two miles away. To their right, maybe a hundred yards away, a bunch of expectant but now disappointed Security zombies waited in ambush.

“We out-thunk ‘em, for now.” Trip loaded his gun, slapping the chamber into place. “Won’t last long.”

Rudy stared out the side window. “They’re already catching on.”

Trip didn’t need to turn and look. The
Wound
showed him random Security zombies breaking off from the mass, chugging their way towards them. And fast.

“Man, those things can move,” Rudy said.

Trip closed his eyes, felt around in the
Wound
’s telemetry... and found what he was looking for. Faint, but there, out on the open concrete plain. He angled the car towards it, and hit the gas, dozens of security zombies in pursuit. Without opening his eyes he turned towards Bernice. “You ready to use that thing?”

Bernice settled the bandolier into place over her chest. “I could shoot something, yeah.”

“Just have to keep them off us until we’re in range.” Trip twitched to roll down both Bernice’s window and his. He pushed himself up through the open window, trusting she’d get the idea and do the same.

The second he was out, he was twisting around and firing a shot into a Security zombie arcing down towards the trunk after a running leap. The shot caught the zombie in the crinkled, carapace covered face. Took it half off, but didn’t stop the zombie from landing squarely on the trunk on all fours. After a moment it steadied itself and tried to growl up at Trip, but with half its face missing, the best it could do was a sad gurgling as it coiled to leap at him.

The gurgle was cut short as Bernice’s both-barrel shot took it square in the chest, unbalancing the zombie at just the right moment to send it tumbling away.

Impressed, Trip smiled at Bernice across the roof. She was already reloading. “So, you and Rudy...” he began, firing behind them at a Security zombie he sensed through the
Wound
’s telemetry.

Bernice looked up from loading the sawed-off. “What about us?”

“What are your intentions?” Trip pulled off another shot, demolishing the leg of the closest Security zombie at the knee. The zombie stumbled, became a leap-frog for the other zombies running behind it.

“What?” Bernice snapped the shotgun shut and fired both barrels into a leaping zombie, winging it but otherwise barely causing it to falter.

Trip fired off his last round into the zombie Bernice had winged, right in the throat. The zombie’s head went rolling away. Trip snapped his head around to smirk proudly at Bernice. “You’re not his usual speed. Don’t fuck him over.” A tingle in the back of his consciousness and he pointed his gun down at the
Wound
. He gave Bernice a wide-mouthed half-grin. “That’s my job. — Well, gotta go.”

He slid back down into the car, not waiting to see if she was doing the same, and settled down into his seat. “This is range, right?” Trip asked Rudy through the rear-view.

“Range for what?” Bernice asked, slipping back inside herself.

Rudy leaned forward, squinted out the windshield, up at the ceiling, mouth moving as he did silent calculations. “Yeah. Just about. Might not have enough room, though.”

“We’ll have room.” Trip twitched. The
Wound
slowed to under twenty and the GameGear screen went white, the words “Kitten Ejector” flashing in red, with a countdown beneath. 5, 4, 3...

Trip shot Bernice an excited, eyebrow-raised smile. “Watch this.”

1...

The
Wound
’s hood split open, right down the middle, and spat out a fireball. From the fireball emerged a short missile, no longer than a forearm. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment as stabilizer fins popped out, then took off, blue flame spurting out its ass. It dipped low to fly along the floor out ahead of the
Wound
.

Bernice’s eyes followed the missile, astonished. “You had that thing all along?”

Trip smirked. “Think we came in here without a way of getting out quick?”

The missile jerked upwards then, straight for the ceiling — and the homing beacon, still embedded right where Trip had shot it. On impact, the roof rippled, tearing and shredding upwards and out with an expanding fireball.

“Oh, great, you made a hole,” Bernice said as the smoke cleared, daylight streaming through the jagged-edged tear. “You bring a ladder?”

“What, and leave the car here?” Trip grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “You’re gonna want to hold on,” he suggested, slamming the brakes. The
Wound
skidded to a stop just below the hole. As Security zombies swarmed in for the kill from all sides, Trip twitched.

The GameGear screen went white again. This time the words “Deus Ex Kangaroo” flashed red, but there was no countdown.

The
Wound
leapt. Straight up, lifted by a quartet of single-use jump-jets anchored to her undercarriage, one inside each wheel. There was just enough juice in the jump jets for the
Wound
to clear the lip of the hole and hover there a second before Trip triggered auxiliary rockets in the rear bumper to give the car a nice little push away from the hole so they were over rooftop. Trip twitched again, blowing the tires up to twice their size just as the jets sputtered out of fuel, dropping the
Wound
the few feet to the roof with a thud.

“Hey, what d’ya know,” Trip said to the steering wheel, “it actually worked this time.”

“And you’re welcome,” Rudy said. Bernice twisted around and leaned back over the seat to grab his head between her hands and pull him towards her, kissing him.

“Oh, brother.” Trip rolled his eyes at them as he twitched the
Wound
into park and let her wheels deflate back to normal size. “Rudy, you’re up front.”

“Wait a second,” Bernice said, letting go of Rudy’s head, “shotgun doesn’t expire.”

“Not shotgun. Behind the wheel.” Trip popped his door open, got out and flipped the front seat forward so Rudy could get out. “I wanna spend some quality time with my unconscious maybe zombie maybe girlfriend.”

“No shit?” Rudy got out, giving Trip the stun baton. “I get to drive?”

“Who said anything about driving?” Trip thumbed at the patch cord in his neck. Trip pushed Rudy out of the way and slid into the back seat. He fixed Rudy with an icy stare while he pulled back the front seat. “Just sit there and don’t touch anything,” Trip said.

“Sure, sure,” Rudy nodded, settling in behind the wheel. He kept reaching out to touch the steering wheel only to shiver and retract his hands. Next to him, Bernice giggled at his hesitation and snuggled herself up against him.

In the back seat, Trip laid Roxanne down, her head on his lap. He stroked hair away from her closed eyes, rolled her head over to get a better look at the biomass in her datajack. Its mottled skin pulsed as if it was breathing. “Okay, you disgusting little thing, you gotta go,” he said, and plucked it from her neck.

Roxanne’s eyes sprung open. The skin around her eyes was suddenly streaked with glowing blue spiderwebs.

“Vishnu’s balls!” Trip exclaimed, caught off guard. The unplugged biomass dropped from his fingers and he reached for the stun baton on the seat next to him only to find Roxanne’s hand already around its handle. And she wasn’t letting it go. She wasn’t trying to use it against him, though — just holding it, firm, so he couldn’t use it against her.

“Jack in!” Roxanne’s voice was coarse and crackling.

Trip wrapped his fingers around the baton, hoping his fingers would find the trigger. He’d stun them both unconscious is he had to. “That’d be a bad idea...”

Roxanne’s voice went soft, distant, her eyes staring up into his. “Jack in... or I kill her.”

“And of course you will.” Trip let go of the baton and grabbed the patch cord connecting him to the
Wound
. “I’m gonna regret this.” He gave it a yank, pulling the other end from the dashboard. As it whipped out, it almost hit Rudy’s ear.

“Hey, watch it,” Rudy said, twisting around. “What the...?”

Trip looked up at him. “I do anything weird, yank the cord, right?” Without waiting for a confirmation, he
snick
ed into Roxanne.

CHAPTER 18: JACKED

Trip jacked into nothingness.

Not blindness, just pure, featureless white. Stretching out forever and ever.

Trip’s avatar stood naked at the center of infinity.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he was alone. And it was cold. And he didn’t have any cigs.

He wheeled around on his heel and saw... nothing. “Okay, this was probably a mistake,” he said to the nothingness on his third spin.

“You haven’t lowered your firewall, Trip.”

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. It wasn’t Roxanne’s, but then again, it wasn’t
not
Roxanne’s.

Trip huffed. “Why bother having it if I’m not going to use it? Let me guess. The All-Mind, right? Where’s Roxanne?”

“She’s in here with me. Lower your firewall and join us.”

“Much as I love threesomes, you’ve got no body, and Roxanne’s in no position to say yes and mean it.”

“A body can be arranged, if that would make you more comfortable.” The voice was suddenly just behind his ear. “But I agree. We don’t need her.”

Trip turned towards the voice. He was still surrounded by nothing. “Speak for yourself.”

“I’m not going to hurt her. I’m not going to hurt any of you.”

“So I should feel free to ignore the death threat and jack out then?”

“I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Talk? About what?”

“Our future, of course.”

“
Our
future? We have a future?”

The All-Mind’s voice became a whisper in his ear. “You do want to rule the world, don’t you?”

Trip plucked the jack from his neck, blinked as cyberspace faded and his eyes cleared, Roxanne in his lap, for all the world sleeping peacefully. The filigree of blue webbing was still there in her eyelids, but fading rapidly.

“So?” Rudy asked, twisted around in the front seat and gawking at Trip, passing a half-empty jug of beer to Bernice. His lips were smeared with dark red. Lipstick.

Trip lifted Roxanne off his lap and sat her up, gently laying her head against the back window and taking the jack out from behind her ear. “So,” Trip said, pushing on the back of the driver’s seat with his knees, “I’m getting out.”

“What?” Rudy opened the driver’s door and got out. “Why?”

Trip coiled the patch cord around his fist, then pushed his way out of the
Wound
. Once he was out, he bent down to smirk at Bernice in the passenger seat. He thumbed at Roxanne. “When she comes to, tell her we’ll always have her bedroom, and that I’m expecting some kind of monument be erected in my honor for rescuing her. Maybe in that town square — get rid of that awful junk fountain. Nothing flashy, though. Fifty foot tall and solid gold will do.”

“What are you talking about?” Rudy asked.

Trip pocketed the patch cord and reached into the
Wound
to stab a few buttons on the GameGear. The trunk popped open. Trip stood up, gave Rudy a fox-in-the-henhouse grin. “Yeah, looks like the All-Mind wants to hook up and take over the world with me, so I’m going back.”

Rudy shrugged. “You not taking the car, are you?”

“Nice,” Trip said before walking back to the trunk, where he grabbed the kinked and knotted bundle of rope Hunt-R used as a pillow and stuffed it under the crook of his arm. “Real nice. That all you have to ask?”

Rudy was already back in the driver’s seat. His hands hovered over the steering wheel for a second, then snapped onto it. He let out a long, happy sigh. “If you’re not taking the car, then, don’t really need any details, do I?”

Trip slammed the driver’s door closed. “I’d invite you along, but honestly, you’ve been cramping my style lately. Besides, you stick around her, I’m pretty sure Cleavage there is going to fuck your brains out at some point.”

Rudy flushed. “Really?”

Bernice slid up next to him, slipped her hand under his t-shirt. “Chances are pretty good, yeah.” She looked out at Trip. “What about Rox? She’s still got those nanochines running around in her, right?”

“The All-Mind’s deactivating them. Roxanne’ll be fine once she wakes up. All of you will be.” Trip took out his tin of cigs. One left. Usually he’d save the last one for an emergency, but he was standing on the roof of his own personal department store, now. Getting more wouldn’t be a problem, he suspected. He lit up. “Just keep driving east ‘till you run out of roof, then the All-Mind will whip up a ramp. You time it right, you’ll hit the ground just in time to meet up with the rest of the little wasteland cult you hang with. Roxanne wasn’t lying about that, they’re being freed.” Trip smirked down at Rudy. “Well, guess this is —”