TWENTY-FIVE
Ruppert had been exhausted after the eight-hour drive from Sonoma to Los Angeles, but now the threat of Terror kept his adrenaline high. Lucia drove, leaving him nothing to do but tap his fingers, search the radio, and check the rearview for police. In the past weeks, they’d kept to back roads and out of the way towns, but today they rode interstate 10 to put the city behind them as fast as possible. The sprawl scrolled on and on: West Covina, Pomona, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga…and he still felt caught in the city’s tentacles. He hoped they didn’t hit a checkpoint.
He activated the display screen in Archer’s dashboard and found that Archer had decent mapping software. No GPS, of course, which would have required an uplink and left the truck vulnerable to tracking, but plenty of road and terrain maps assembled from last year’s satellite images. Once they were well away from the city, they could make a good part of their trip off-road. Lucia had been smart to steal Archer’s truck.
At last the concrete gave way to sand and rocks. They again would cut through the Mojave Desert, but Lucia did not want to detour and check on Dr. Smith.
“He might tell me this is a bad idea,” Lucia explained. “He might even change my mind. I can’t risk that.”
They stopped in the town of Yermo for fuel and basic supplies. Water, crackers and dried fruit would have to sustain them for the rest of their drive-every stop was a risk. Lucia entered the gas station to pay with some of Liam’s cash, while Ruppert slumped in the passenger seat, a baseball cap low over his eyes, hoping he didn’t get picked up on a stray security camera. Terror could look out through any digital eyes, and they could automate an ongoing image search for his face. Or so he'd heard.
They left the highway and kept to worn back roads as they traveled northeast through the desert. Again he enjoyed seeing the rich vistas of sand painted in warm tones by the late afternoon sun, which glowed fat and orange in the rearview. It was like another planet, a beautiful place where nobody was watching you.
Lucia found a Spanish-language station playing traditional songs, and in time the cheerful music and the fantastically empty desert soothed Ruppert’s overstrained nerves, and gradually lulled him into a light sleep. When he woke again, he asked Lucia where they were, then checked the map.
“That can’t be right,” Ruppert said.
“What?”
“It looks like you’re taking us right through Las Vegas.”
“That is the fastest way,” Lucia said.
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Daniel, you have to switch your brain around,” she told him. “What is safe and what is dangerous have changed places.”
“I don’t think Vegas is safe no matter whose side you’re on. Do we have any weapons?”
“I have my blade.”
“Great. We couldn’t be more prepared, then. One stone knife.”
"Good for evading metal detectors," Lucia pointed out.
"But that's not what I'm worried about."
They stopped for a restroom break by the side of the road-once they got close to Vegas, they wouldn’t want to stop. Then Lucia claimed the driver's seat again, and they continued driving. Within minutes, the towers of Vegas became visible, illuminated by red sunset reflecting off the acres of glass windows.
The city looked attractive until you drew close enough to see the burned-out cars heaped along the sides of the road, turning the Vegas strip into a shooting alley. They drove between high ramparts of rusting vehicles. Ruppert watched the car-piles for snipers.
They passed a giant black pyramid, a medieval fairy-castle, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building. All looked frayed at the edges, their facades chewed by years of bombs and machine gun fire. Scattered open-pit fires provided the only lights in the deepening gloom.
Las Vegas was a corpse of a city. Its demise had been brought about in part by a zealous Secretary of Faith and Values in Washington, who outlawed prostitution and gambling nationwide; in part by the Western Resource and Energy Committee's stringent water restrictions on Nevada; and ultimately by water riots in the streets. Now trash filled those streets, sometimes narrowing the strip to a single lane, and gangs of armed men and women inhabited the great husks of theme parks and casinos.
In front of a replica of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomph, the street narrowed again, and iron gates spanned between the piles of rubble, blocking the road. Men flanked the gate, armed with machine guns, dressed in berets and lacy, puffy, beaded coats that looked like they'd been designed during the late Bourbon dynasty, just before its bloody, frilly end.
Lucia slowed as several of the longhaired, unshaven men stepped forward, signaling with velvet-gloved hands for Ruppert and Lucia to stop.
“This is not good,” Ruppert said.
“Don’t worry,” Lucia said. “I doubt they’re Terror informants.”
“That hadn’t occurred to me yet, but thanks.”
A bearded man approached Lucia’s window, and she reached for the handle to roll it down. Ruppert wanted to tell her to stop, but what could they do? Two rough-looking male faces appeared outside his own window, their hostile glares a steep contrast to their puffy silk apparel.
“Toll gate,” the bearded man said through Lucia’s open window. “Ride the king’s road, pay the king’s taxes."
“What's the toll?" Lucia asked him.
“Depends what you carry,” the bearded man said. “Got drugs? Ammo?”
“Sorry,” Lucia said. “We have a little cash, that’s it.”
“Cash?” The bearded man looked to his comrades, who laughed. “Cash doesn’t buy around here. We wipe with cash. Get out of the truck. Your man, too.”
The armed men directed Ruppert and Lucia out into the dusty air and stood them against the grill of the truck. Two of the bandits patted them down and searched their pockets. More searched inside the truck. They unrolled two tarps stored in the back of Archer's truck, one printed with forest camouflage and another with desert camouflage, but were disappointed that nothing was hidden inside them. The bandits dug out the paper bag holding their food and water, Lucia’s worn, patched duffle, Ruppert’s embossed leather suitcase.
“This one looks expensive,” one of them muttered, stroking his fingers across over the suitcase.
“You’re welcome to the suitcase,” Ruppert said. “But the clothes inside are all I have.” He didn’t realize how true those words were until he said them aloud. He was even traveling in a stolen truck.
“We got a million suitcases,” said the bearded man, who seemed to be the group’s leader. “People left quick, back during the riots.”
The men had no interest in Ruppert’s thrift-store clothes, but the contents of Lucia’s duffle drew their attention.
“What’s this here?” A bandit held up her modified remote control, the colored wires tumbling in every direction.
“It’s for housebreaking,” Lucia said, surprising Ruppert with her bluntness. “Really only works on residential systems. Some liquor stores.”
The man snorted and laid it on the truck’s hood. He lifted out a blue data disc the size of a silver dollar, one of fifty in her bag.
“What are all these?” he asked.
“It’s fifty copies of the same video,” Lucia told him.
“Starring you?” he asked, drawing snickers and leers from the others.
“I doubt it would interest you,” she said. “Just a historical document, really.”
“If it’s so not-interesting,” the bearded man asked, “Why you smuggling fifty copies?”
“Why do you assume we’re smuggling?” Ruppert asked.
“You’re driving through Vegas, ain’t you?” the bearded man said. He looked back to Lucia. “What is it?”
“It’s restricted information,” Lucia said. Ruppert wished she would stop there, but she continued. “Letting people know about some covert operations, state secrets, that kind of thing.”