The biodiesel engine snorted and roared as the driver laughed and floored it.
Options gone, I pushed off, turning around and bracing for impact, eyes sweeping across the blurry asphalt like I might be able to locate a chunk that happened to be soft as a mattress. As I jumped, the driver, out of sheer dickness, whacked the gitback. Crackling snakes of static electricity discharged all across the outside of the truck, a few questing heads managing to bite me in the ass.
I hit hard, but better than I could have ever hoped, worn sneakers skidding across the wet and oily blacktop like skis on fresh-packed powder, the sort of slick bit you’d only ever see in an old Jackie Chan chopp’emup.
I laughed out loud as I slid to a stop, feeling like a total action hero, the couple of burnt spots on my butt hardly counting in the cosmic order of how badly such a dismount could have gone. I’d gained almost three blocks thanks to the hitch, leaving the two stomp-booted Chrome Lords way behind. The yellow-haired cop in the spook suit was probably still somewhere back behind them, blocked from pursuit by five hundred pounds of slow, mean meat.
My happy dance got knee-capped when three more members of the gang boiled out of an alley half a block away. As the truck sound lessened I realized I was hearing sirens coming from what sounded like every direction.
I took a deep breath and took off.
Sometimes life is like an arcade game where you get just one token, and if you lose, you die.
That would make a great wordup, but I was beginning to think my days of stepping on power toes as a posto had reached toe tag city. There were Chrome Lords everywhere, and where they weren’t, the gaps were plugged with cops. That yellow-haired spook-suited finestette seemed to be everywhere, blocking every move I made.
If the gang got me I’d be stomped so badly I’d fit in a pizza box with room left over for extra toppings. If the cops got me I’d be looking at a probable resisting-arrest beating, a likely holding cell rendezvous with the sort of cell troll who would regard his tender new roomie as a tasty bedtime snack, and a guaranteed verdict of being guilty of something. The longer I eluded my pursuers the more I was torquing them off, and at this point surrender was some flavor of suicide.
My bag of tricks and options was empty. My utterly unplanned pinball through the back streets had brought me to the edge of a Bug Trap zone, and that trap was beginning to look like my only available escape route.
The Bug Traps had a lot to do with the way America—and for that matter, the rest of the world—was right then. We’d worked our way out of a pretty bad stretch when everything that wasn’t in the toilet was teetering on the rim, into something like peace and stability. Some wars ended. Terrorism was getting policed into the margins. The economy had started chugging along. Actual steps were being taken to deal with the rapidly degenerating environment.
Then the Bug Traps appeared. Overnight, and out of nowhere.
What they were was no secret. Messages began appearing on various media outlets, slick and jam-proof off-world infomercials announcing the SETI grand prize. Members of an alien race who called themselves the B’hlug had come to our solar system and taken up residence on Venus, that planet chosen because we didn’t seem to be using it, and it was comfortably out of bomb range. The B’hlug declared themselves a peaceful and benevolent race, looking forward to having some earthlings come on out to check out the very nice place they had built for us so we could all get to know each other better.
To facilitate this process, humans being comparatively backward in the space travel game, white cylinders about the size of a UPS truck stood on end began appearing all over the world. Want to visit us on sunny Venus? Just step into one of these transport booths and leave the teleporting to us.
The rational planetary demographic was tickled, amused, and intrigued by this invitation and its meaning. We were not alone, and the other guys sounded kind of interesting.
Of course those level heads are rarely in charge, or get to stay in control when what the paranoidocracy decrees to be the shit hits what they define as the fan. This reactionary xenophobic fringe went full-out foam-mouthed, bug-eyed, howling batshit. Never ones to scruple at such charming niceties as logic, fairness, intellectual honesty, or any of the other stains they wanted washed out of their concept of a proper society, they and their darlings immediately began seizing power, blasting themselves upward on a blaring cacophony of shrieking propaganda, gibbering hysteria, and extravagant threats calculated to make any fence-sitters on the alien issue stain their shorts and fall off on their side.
The New Order formed, attacks were immediately launched on what the mouthpieces of the new regime called the Bug Traps.
They set new low water marks for failure. Various attempts to remove or destroy the transport booths got precisely nowhere. Armies—America’s and those on foreign soil—tried to break in so they could go kick the evil ETs off “our” planet, which meant Venus. They might as well have declared war on gravity. One heavily decorated general with a history of ending wars was able to go into a Bug Trap. A week later a two-word message from him appeared in the Oval Office: I resign. Over in the Middle East, where some denizens take their backlash against outsiders seriously, a group of fundamentalist mullahs with a typically weak grasp of science and reality managed to incite a group of fanatics into nuking one.
At the conclusion of this Elmer Fudd fatwa, sitting in the giant crater surrounded by glassified sand was the portal, barely smudged and fully functional.
I wasn’t sure what I thought about the aliens. The government line was so luridly cartoonish it had to be a lie, meaning the Bugs were probably not the slavering baby-eaters and virgin-defilers certain fact-impaired media outlets insisted they were, even without a single chewed baby or weepy deflowered virgin to back up their recitations of official talking points.
Walking into a Bug Trap and seeing what happened next had never been something I’d planned on trying. Not so much from lack of curiosity but because there were too many causes and issues to posto for right where I was. Big Brother needed snotty little brother kicking him in the ankles every chance possible. My focus and industry had of course led to my present situation. So much for the virtues of a solid work ethic.
“There he is!” A rising clatter and rumble of boots followed the shout. Decision made: Hello Venus, good-bye Earth.
I bolted for the police barricade around the Bug Trap.
Warnings blared, triggered by proximity sensors. “Warning! This is a Prohibited Area! Anyone approaching the alien artifact is subject to severe penalties!”
I considered myself duly warned as I hurdled the concrete barricade. I was halfway across the open area between it and the Bug Trap when the first gunshot sounded, a round cracking off the ground just in front of me. I focused on the black door-shaped area on the face of the trap, trying to will myself there. I knew it wasn’t the sort of door you’d find in a house or a store, but some sort of exotic field. Certain people were allowed to pass through, others were rejected. Soldiers, suicide bombers, sociopaths, and fundamentalists might as well try to walk through a brick wall.
Would I, a moderately outlaw, rather subversive, more or less dedicated troublemaker be on the alien A List? If not, I was screwed.
Another bullet passed by my head, so close I could hear it zip by. The spike of relief I felt at being missed snapped off when something slammed into me from behind.