“The brake, Bullock!” Morrison shrieked. “Climb over and hit the break!”
Bullock saw the emergency brake, pulled it—and the car squealed, and spun around, out of control. Car screeched around them, horns honked. He heard a siren somewhere.
Bullock felt himself catapulted up front. The side of his head cracked into the steering wheel. He got up, sitting up in the front seat—just in time to see the car straighten itself out. The emergency brake popped out of activation position and the self driving car headed right for the other suicidally robotic vehicle.
The two self-driving cars were a few seconds from collision. Bullock could see the terrified faces of O’Mara and Monteleone.
“Bullock!” Morrison shrieked. “Do something!”
Then a beeping sounded from the blinking self-steering indicator on the dashboard. The words Automatic Driving Signal Interrupted flowed digitally by on the small billboard screen…
Their self-driving car veered, suddenly, to the right, bumping onto the road shoulder. It bounced, swerved, fishtailed… and slowed. Then it came to a sudden stop.
Heart pounding, Bullock turned to look out the back window—just in time to see the other self-driving car driving headfirst into the very large flat silver grill of an enormous semi truck.
The self-driving car crumpled, flew to bits, flame spouting up around the semi-truck which went swerving into the left hand shoulder… it piled into the freeway divider, ripping up great swaths of white metal and then stopping about seventy feet from Bullock. But other cars were swerving, losing control, spinning…
“Oh God,” Bullock said.
Morrison was jumping out of the car, running wildly, shouting, stumbling…
“Morrison, no!” Bullock shouted.
But that’s when a 1990s era station wagon, screaming out of control, slammed into Morrison, and dragged him under it, past the remaining self driving car.
The other cars were moving on, past the wreckage, or pulling over. The prototype car seemed to stall, then.
Bullock decided it was safe to get out. He felt dizzy as he clambered across the front seat, opened the door, got out of the car, and stumbled toward the ditch on the other side of the shoulder. The wind off the lake stung his nose. He liked the feel of it. It seemed to calm him a little…
Morrison was dead. O’Mara was dead. Monteleone was dead…
Bullock heard a whirring sound, turned, and saw the self-driving car’s lights coming on. That ghostly steering wheel was turning once more. It was turning toward him.
The car was going to come after him, now. It was going to finish what it had started.
Then another vehicle was coming—backing up along the road shoulder. It was the coppery Acura. It kept going, honking… and he realized the driver wanted him to get out of the way.
Bullock turned and jumped into the ditch. The Acura was a blur in his peripheral vision. He heard a loud metallic crack, looked up to see the Acura, more than double the size of Blume’s prototype, smashing its rear end into it, crushing the self-driving car’s front end and forcing it into the freeway.
The Acura then drove forward, pulling up close to Bullock… and its engine died. The driver of the Acura tried to restart it. But it only whined. Crashing into the now-defunct self-driving car had damaged the Acura too.
The driver got out, ran around the front of the car to Bullock. It was the man who’d called himself Wolfe. He was looking around, with an air of urgency that was just short of desperation.
“Did… did you stop the car I was in, somehow?” Bullock asked.
“Yes. Couldn’t keep control of it though. And now the car I was in is stopped too. And that’s not part of my plan.” Police cars were arriving, beyond the crashed semitruck. The truck driver was getting out, unhurt, shouting to the police. “They’ll be here in a second. Do you think you can make it over that fence, Bullock?”
Bullock turned—and saw a hurricane fence about twenty five feet high.
“I… don’t know. Doubt it. I don’t want to go over it. Want the police. They’ll be here in a minute…”
“Look, you can’t trust the cops, Purity has friends in the department. Verrick wants you dead! You’ve got to…”
Then another car weaved past the ones pulled up behind the wreckage, and drove up to them. It pulled up sharply. It was a Toyota Camry. A young woman was behind the wheel.
“Wolfe! Get in!”
“Seline! What are you doing here?”
“I came to get your ass out of this mess! Get the hell in the car, Wolfe! Him too if you want!”
Wolfe opened the back door of the Camry, and Bullock felt himself shoved headfirst partway into the vehicle. “Get in, Bullock!” Wolfe said. “Or I’ll kick your head in! Get in the car!”
Bullock climbed the rest of the way in, Wolfe got in with him, and hadn’t quite closed the door before the Camry raced off down the road.
More sirens were warbling up from behind.
“With any luck, they’ll be too busy with this mess to follow us,” the woman said.
Wolfe looked at her. “What the Hell? Where’d you get this car? You hot wire it?”
“No! I’m not like you, Wolfe! I rented it! Hello, it’s called a credit card!”
“Oh. But… Seline… How’d you find me?”
“Never mind.”
“You followed me!”
She was silent for a moment. Then she shrugged. “So what? How’d we first meet? You were following me!”
“Yeah but… this is more like stalking.”
“You better be kidding or you can get out right here.”
Wolfe laughed. “I was. Sort of.”
The woman took the exit, and drove off, fast as she could, taking turns frequently…
“The cameras,” Seline said. “They going to track us…?”
“Got my phone set to blur them as we get close. Where we going?”
“The safehouse.”
“Can I get out here?” Bullock asked.
“No,” Seline said.
“Could you turn me over to the police?”
“No,” she said.
“I’m going with you two?”
“Yes,” she said.
Bullock leaned back on the seat. He felt like he was going to faint.
He buckled his seat belt, and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Sir?”
“Yes, Starling, just report.”
“Is this line secure, sir?”
“Yes, yes,” Verrick said impatiently. He was in his penthouse apartment, now, in his bathrobe, smoking a cigar and looking out at the lights coming on as dusk sank into night. He was trying to focus on the cigar and not think about Oxycontin. Needed to keep his head clear. “Wait—why are you asking me that? This is your goddamn system! You tell me if it’s secure!”
“Sir yes sir, I just meant—”
“Never mind what you meant! Did the cars get them or not?”
“We’re sure of three of them, sir. The cars are wrecked, and O’Mara, Monteleone, and Morrison are dead.”
“And Bullock?”
“Sir, we haven’t got a definite report on him, sir. His body has not turned up, sir. But there’s a lot of chaos out there, sir.”
Starling’s sir tic was getting on his nerves but he let it go. “Don’t make excuses about chaos, Starling—find Bullock!”
“Sir, yes sir. I have discovered that there was a car stolen in the area. I suspect its remote ignition was hacked…”
“Wolfe?”
“I think so. It was found wrecked on the same highway. No sign of the driver…”
“Dammit! He could have Bullock! Wait—what about ctOS surveillance in the area where Bullock disappeared?”
“Checked it sir. Cameras were blotted out in the area, remotely. Sir I believe that could be the work of Aiden Pearce.”