We look into the new face of the city.
The roof across the street is smoking. Thousands of panes of glass have shattered and plummeted to the street, where they now form a crunchy layer, kind of like fish scales. Chunks of rubble litter the ground, and the entire front of our building has been cratered and sandblasted. Street signs and lampposts have been thrown down across the road. Chunks of pavement, bricks and mortar, thick black wires, knots of plumbing, twisted balls of wrought iron, and tons of unrecognizable debris are piled everywhere we look.
The passenger sedan is still parked near the heap of burning tires. It has been crushed under a pie-shaped chunk of concrete, its rebar poking out like a compound fracture.
The choking black loops of tire smoke cloud the air and blot out the sky.
And the dust. Firemen would hose down the dust on a typical job. Without them, dust settles in layers everywhere like dirty snow. I see no tire tracks, which tells me no cars have been around here—yet. Dawn is already rolling a lit tire toward the intersection.
I stumble over rubble into the middle of the street and for a moment I feel as though, once again, the city is mine. I kick the side of the destroyed car. I really throw my weight into it and leave a boot-sized dent in the quarter panel.
Got you, you son of a bitch. And your friends are gonna have to learn to climb if they want to come get me.
With my sleeve protecting my mouth, I survey the damage to the building facades. And I begin to laugh. I laugh loud and long. My hooting and howling echoes from the buildings, and even Dawn looks up from rolling her tire and cracks a little smile at me.
And then I see them. People. Just a half dozen, emerging into the light from doorways farther down the street. The neighborhood isn’t gone, I think. It was just hiding. The people, my neighbors, step out one by one into the street.
The wind sweeps the inky black smoke up over our heads. Small fires burn up and down the block. Rubble is strewn everywhere. Our little slice of America looks like a war zone. And we look like the survivors of some disaster film. Just like we damn well should, I think.
“Listen,” I announce to the ragged semicircle of survivors. “It won’t be safe out here for very long. The machines are going to come back. They’re going to try to clean this up, but we can’t let them. They were built for this place and we can’t have that. We can’t make it easy for them to come after us. We’ve got to slow them down. Even stop them, if we can.”
And when I finally say it out loud, I can hardly believe my ears. But I know what has to be done here, even if it’s hard. So I look into the eyes of my fellow survivors. I take a deep breath and I tell them the truth: “If we want to live, we’ve got to destroy New York City.”
The demolition methods pioneered in New York City by Marcus Johnson and his wife, Dawn, were replicated throughout the world over the next several years. By sacrificing the infrastructure of entire cities, urban survivors were able to dig in, stay alive, and fight back from the very beginning. These dogged city dwellers formed the heart of the early human resistance. Meanwhile, millions of human refugees were still fleeing to the country, where Rob had not yet evolved to operate. He soon would.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
3. HIGHWAY 70
Laura, this is your father. Bad things are happening.
I can’t talk. Meet me at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Gotta go.
MARCELO PEREZ
ZERO HOUR
This account was pieced together from conversations overheard in a forced-labor camp, roadside surveillance footage, and the sentiments expressed by a former congresswoman to her fellow prisoners. Laura Perez, mother of Mathilda and Nolan Perez, had no idea of the instrumental role that her family would play in the imminent conflict—or that in just under three years her daughter would save my life and the lives of my squad mates.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
“Hurry up, Nolan,” urges Mathilda, clutching a map and shrinking into the warmth of the car.
Eight years old, Nolan stands on the shoulder of the road, his small silhouette painted onto the pavement by dawn sunlight. He wobbles, concentrating furiously on peeing. Finally, mist rises from a puddle in the dirt.
The Ohio morning is moist and chilly on this empty two-lane dirt highway. Brown hills stretch for miles around, silent. My antique car pants, sending clouds of carbon monoxide gliding over the dewy pavement. Somewhere far away, a predatory bird screeches.
“See, Mom? I told you we shouldn’t let him drink the apple juice.”
“Mathilda, be nice to your brother. He’s the only one you’ll ever have.”
It’s a mom thing to say, and I’ve said it a thousand times. But this morning I find myself relishing the normalcy of the moment. We search for the ordinary when we are surrounded by the extraordinary.
Nolan is finished. Instead of sitting in the backseat, he climbs into the front, right onto his sister’s lap. Mathilda rolls her eyes but says nothing. Her brother doesn’t weigh much and he’s scared. And she knows it.
“You zip up, buddy?” I ask, out of habit. Then I remember where I am and what’s happening, or going to happen soon. Maybe.
My eyes flicker to the rearview mirror. Nothing yet.
“Let’s go, Mom. Geez,” says Mathilda. She shakes out the map and stares at it, like a mini adult. “We’ve got like another five hundred miles to go.”
“I wanna see Grampa,” whines Nolan.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Back on the road. No more bathroom breaks. We’re not stopping until Grampa’s house.”
I jam my foot on the accelerator. The car lurches forward, loaded with jugs of water, boxes of food, two cartoon-themed suitcases, and camping gear. Under my seat, I’ve got a Glock 17 pistol in a black plastic case, cocooned in gray foam. It’s never been fired.
The world has changed over the last year. Our technology has been going feral. Incidents. The incidents have been piling up, slowly but surely. Our transportation, our communications, our national defense. The more incidents I saw, the more the world began to feel hollow, as if it could collapse at any moment.
Then my daughter told me a story. Mathilda told me about Baby-Comes-Alive, and she finished by saying those words that she could not know, could never know: robot defense act.
When she said it, I looked into her eyes and I knew.
Now I am running. I am running to save the lives of my children. Technically, this is an emergency vacation. Personal days. Congress is in session today. Maybe I’ve lost my mind. I hope I have. Because I believe that something is in our technology. Something evil.
Today is Thanksgiving.
The inside of this old car is loud. Louder than any car I’ve ever driven. I can’t believe the kids are asleep. I can hear the tires gnawing the pavement. Their rough vibrations are translated right through the steering wheel and into my hands. When I push the brake with my foot, it moves a lever that applies friction to the wheels. Even the knobs and buttons jutting out of the dash are solid and mechanical.
The only worthwhile thing about the car is the satellite radio. Sleek and modern, it churns out pop music that manages to keep me awake and distract me from the road noise.
I’m not used to this—doing the work for my technology. The buttons I usually push don’t need my force, only my intention. Buttons are supposed to be servants, waiting to deliver your commands to the machine. Instead, this loud, dumb piece of steel I’m driving demands that I pay strict attention to every turn of the road, keep my hands and feet ready at all times. The car takes no responsibility for the job of driving. It leaves me in total control.
I hate it. I don’t want control. I just want to get there.
But this is the only car I could find without an intravehicular communication chip. The government made IVC chips standard more than a decade ago, same as they did seat belts, air bags, and emissions criteria. This way, the cars can talk to one another. They can figure out ways to a
void or minimize damage in the milliseconds before a crash. There were glitches at first. One company recalled a few million cars because their chips were reporting to be three feet ahead of where they really were. It made other cars swerve away unnecessarily—sometimes into trees. But in the long run, the IVC chip has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
New cars come with IVC chips, and old cars require a safety upgrade. A few cars, like this one, were grandfathered in because they’re too primitive even for the upgrade.
Most people think only an idiot would drive such an old car, especially with children on board. It’s a thought I try to ignore as I focus on the road, imagining how people used to do this.
As I drive, a feeling of unease creeps over me and settles into a knot in the middle of my back. I’m tensed up, waiting. For what? Something has changed. Something is different and it’s scaring me.
I can’t put my finger on it. The road is empty. Scrubby bushes cluster on either side of the dusty two-lane highway. My kids are asleep. The car sounds the same.
The radio.
I’ve heard this song before. They played it maybe twenty minutes ago. Hands on the steering wheel, I stare straight ahead and drive. The next song is the same. And the next. After fifteen minutes, the first song plays again. The satellite radio station is looping the last quarter hour of music. I switch the radio off, not looking, punching at the buttons blindly with my fingers.
Silence.
Coincidence. I’m sure it’s a coincidence. In another few hours, we’ll reach my dad’s house in the country. He lives twenty miles outside Macon, Missouri. The man is a technophobe. Never owned a cell phone or a car made within the last twenty years. He’s got radios, lots of radios, and that’s all. He used to build them from kits. The place where I grew up is wide-open and empty and safe.
My cell phone rings.
I scoop it out of my purse, scan the number. Speak of the devil. It’s my dad.
“Dad?”
“Laura, this is your father. Bad things are happening. I can’t talk. Meet me at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Gotta go.”
And the phone cuts off. What?
“Was that Grampa?” asks Mathilda, yawning.
“Yes.”
“What’d he say?”
“There’s been a change of plans. He wants us to meet him in a different place, now.”
“Where?”
“Indianapolis.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
Something flickers in the rearview mirror.
For the first time in a long time, there is another vehicle on the highway. I feel relieved. Another person is out here. The rest of the world is still fine. Still sane. It’s a truck. People have trucks out here in the country.
But as the truck accelerates and grows closer, I begin to feel scared. Mathilda sees my pale cheeks, my worried frown. She can feel my fright. “Where are we?” she asks.
“Not far now,” I say, watching the rearview.
“Who’s behind us?”
Mathilda sits up and cranes to look back.
“Sit still, Mathilda. Tighten your seat belt.”
The newish brown pickup truck grows rapidly in the mirror. It moves smoothly but too fast.
“Why’s it coming so fast?” asks Mathilda.
“Mommy?” asks Nolan, rubbing his eyes.
“Quiet, you two. I need to concentrate.”
Dread rises in my throat as I watch the rearview. I ease the accelerator down to the floor, but the brown truck is flying now. Sucking up the pavement. I can’t take my eyes off the mirror.
“Mommy,” exclaims Mathilda.
My eyes dart back to where the road is supposed to be and I swerve to negotiate a bend. Nolan and Mathilda hold each other tight. I get the car under control, veer back to my lane. Then, just as we come around the bend to a long straightaway, I see another car in the oncoming lane. It is black and new and now there is no place for us to go.
“Get in the backseat, Nolan,” I say. “Get buckled in. Mathilda, help him.”
Mathilda scrambles to push her brother off her lap and into the backseat. Nolan looks at me, stricken. Big tears are welling in his eyes. He sniffles and reaches for me.
“It’s okay, baby. Just let your sister help you. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I make a steady stream of baby talk while I focus on the road. My eyes alternate between the black car in front and the brown truck behind. Both are closing fast.
“Okay, we’re buckled in, Mommy,” reports Mathilda from the backseat. My little soldier. Before my mother passed away, she used to say that Mathilda was an old soul. It was in her eyes, she said. You could see the wisdom in her beautiful green eyes.
I hold my breath and squeeze the wheel. The hood of the brown truck fills the entire rearview mirror, then disappears. I look to my left in wide-eyed wonder as the rattling brown truck swerves into the oncoming lane. A woman is looking back at me through the passenger window. Her face is warped by terror. Tears stream down her cheeks and her mouth is open and I realize that she’s screaming and pounding her fists—
And then she’s gone, obliterated in a head-on collision with the black car. Like matter and antimatter. It’s as if they’ve erased each other from existence.
Only the awful mechanical grinding crunch of metal collapsing into metal echoes in my ears. In the rearview, a dark lump of metal rolls off the road, throwing smoke and chunks of debris.
It’s gone. Maybe it never happened. Maybe I imagined it.
Slowing the car, I pull off the road. I put my forehead on the cool plastic of the steering wheel. I close my eyes and try to breathe, but my ears are ringing and that woman’s face is on the backs of my eyelids. My hands are shaking. I reach under my thighs and pull tight to steady myself. The questions start from the backseat but I can’t answer them.
“Is that lady okay, Mommy?”
“Why did those cars do that?”
“What if more cars come?”
A few minutes pass. My breath squeezes painfully in and out of my clenched diaphragm. I strain out the sobs, choke down on my emotions to keep the kids calm.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “We’re going to be okay, you guys.”
But my voice rings hollow even in my own ears.
Ten minutes down the road, I come across the first accident.
Smoke pours from twisted wreckage, like a black snake writhing through shattered windows, escaping into the air. The car is half on its side next to the road. A guardrail zigzags out into the road from where it was bashed into during the accident. There are flames coming from the rear of the car.
Then, I see movement—people motions.
In a flash, I imagine myself stepping on the accelerator and speeding past. But I’m not that person. Not yet, anyway. I guess people don’t change that fast, even in the apocalypse.
I pull over a few yards down the road from the wrecked car. It’s a white four door with Ohio plates.
“Stay in the car, kids.”
The hood of the wrecked car is crumpled up like a tissue. The bumper lies on the ground, cracked in half and covered in mud. A mess of engine parts are visible, and the tires point in different directions. I gasp when I notice that one end of the guardrail is going into the passenger-side door.
“Hello?” I call, peering into the driver’s side window. “Anybody need help?”
The door creaks open and a young, overweight guy spills out onto the road shoulder. He rolls over onto all fours, blood running down his face. He coughs uncontrollably. I kneel and help him away from the car, feeling the gravel shoulder gouging my knees through my panty hose.
I force myself to check inside the car.
There is blood on the steering wheel, and the guardrail juts incongruously through the passenger window, but there is no one else inside. Nobody skewered by that errant rail, thank god.
My hair hangs in my face as I pull the young fat guy aw
ay from the wreck. It flutters back and forth with each breath I take. At first, the young man helps. But after a few feet, he collapses onto his stomach. He stops coughing. Looking back toward the car, I see there’s a trail of glistening droplets on the pavement. In the front seat, there is a pool of black liquid.
I shove the man over onto his back. His neck rolls loosely. His blue eyes are open. I see some black soot around his mouth, but he is not breathing. I look down and then glance away. A large chunk of flesh from his side has been torn out by the guardrail. The ragged hole gapes there like an anatomy lesson.
For a moment, I hear only the rush of the flames licking the breeze. What can I do? Only one thing comes to mind: I move my body to block my kids’ sight of the dead man.
Then, a cell phone rings. It comes from the man’s shirt pocket. With bloodstained fingers, I reach for his phone. When I slide it out of his pocket and hold it to my ear, I hear something that crushes the small flicker of hope that was still somewhere deep inside me.
“Kevin,” says the phone. “This is your father. Bad things are happening. I can’t talk. Meet me at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Gotta go.”
Aside from the name, it’s the exact same message. Another incident. Piling up.
I drop the phone onto the man’s chest and stand up. I get back inside my ancient car and hold the steering wheel until my hands stop shaking. I don’t remember seeing or hearing anything for the next few minutes.
Then, I put the car in gear.
“We’re going to Grampa’s house, kids.”
“What about Indianapolis?” asks Mathilda.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“But Grampa said—”
“That wasn’t your grandfather. I don’t know who that was. We’re going to Grampa’s.”
“Is that man okay?” asks Nolan.
Mathilda answers for me.
“No,” she says. “That man is dead, Nolan.”