Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [87]
“Just go as fast as you can,” I said, fumbling in my pockets. I got out another clip and slammed it into the gun, then took a couple of foil packets out. “If-we lose him we might just as well go off the road anyway. Both you and me. Our lives are over. And it’s not just us, either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“if we don’t stop Yhandim from flashing back and forth, then more of this stuff is going to spill out. Everything will change, and it won’t be for the better.”
“Maybe you should get into writing greeting cards. Like ‘Happy wedding—bet it doesn’t last.’ Or ‘Sorry to hear you’re dead.’”
Vinaldi increased the truck’s speed until we were careening toward the corner, trying to stay within the tracks created by Ghuaji. Trees flashed by, black branches flicking hard against the windows. Much later than I would have, he pulled the steering and the wheels locked, sending us sliding toward a wall of rock. I shut my eyes, wishing I’d phrased my last sentence differently, and when I opened them again saw that he had somehow pulled the truck round the corner on the skid.
“Nice one,” I said. “But don’t ever do it again.” Then I fell silent just as Vinaldi stepped on the brakes and killed the lights.
We were in a roughly circular clearing. Sixty yards ahead of us I could see the taillights of Ghuaji’s vehicle. The car was stationary.
We were there, wherever the hell “there” was.
“What do we do now?” Vinaldi asked.
“Roll forward,” I whispered. “As quietly as you can.”
We went about twenty yards until the truck was mostly hidden behind an outcrop of rock, then I motioned for him to stop. By then we could see two things. The first was that although the engine was still running, Ghuaji wasn’t in his vehicle. The second was that on the left side of the road was a building, it was made of old, battered concrete and looked disused. No lights showed in any of the windows, most of which were broken. The shape of the walls was naggingly familiar, but it wasn’t until I realized that the level patch was a compound that I understood what it was.
“It’s a Farm,” I said, bewildered. “It’s an abandoned SafetyNet Farm.” Once it clicked, the whole scene fell into place and I turned in my seat, taking it in.
An electrified fence must once have bordered the area. The main building lay up against the wall of the mountain, where tunnels doubtless led away into the hillside like abandoned concrete wombs. I hoped they were empty. Of course, they would be—they’d hardly abandon valuable spares along with the real estate—but for a moment the alternative possibility seemed all too real. Shambling naked bodies, crawling in darkness until the end of time, feeding off each other’s bodies and excrement until there was nothing left.
Until that moment I hadn’t realized what an extraordinary place the Farm had been, what it really said about humanity. As I stared out at the ruins of this one a shiver went down my back, a shiver which had nothing to do with the cold, or even with The Gap. I was thinking how right it was that the Farms should be connected with that other place, how in some way the mentality behind them was identical.
“Why here?” Vinaldi asked.
I shrugged, stirring sluggishly out of my thoughts. “I have no idea. It’s no closer to The Gap than anywhere else.”
“Unless Maxen’s found some method of forcing a way.”
“Can’t be done.”
“Why not? They got us out, in the end.”
“They didn’t get us out. The Gap got rid of us. They just shipped us home.”
“Bullshit. And if the whole thing was just some sort of fucked-up code zone, like they said, why couldn’t someone have found some way of hacking back into it?”
I shook my head. “That’s only what they said it was.”
“You don’t agree?” Vinaldi spoke with heavy irony, which I supposed was fair enough.
“No,” I said, “I don’t.”’
Then we both saw Ghuaji. He was limping out of the old Farm building with something on a long piece of rope. The soldier was walking slowly and awkwardly, one leg dragging painfully behind. It was too far for us