Final Days

into the distance, Monk couldn’t ignore a growing sense of unease.

It wasn’t like the Mexical ’jacking crews worked this far east, after all. In fact the ASI extended their security envelope far beyond the CTC mass-transit facility, and their present convoy was well within the hundred-kilometre exclusion zone. There were only two tightly controlled air corridors, along with aerial spotter drones programmed to hunt out anyone hiding in the swamps and bayous who shouldn’t be there. Monk himself spent three days a week in charge of a manned ground patrol.

He assuaged his nervousness by checking his armour, layers of Kevlar alternating with artificial spider-silk that could absorb the impact from any number of high-calibre rounds.

Naz muttered something under his breath, clicked his Cobra’s safety off and cracked open the passenger-side door.

‘Hey,’ said Monk, outraged. ‘I didn’t tell you that you could—’

‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Naz snapped back, jumping down to the roadside and taking a two-handed grip on his weapon. ‘I think we should at least rec—’

Monk saw Naz’s eyes widen, and glanced forward just in time to see the APC, a hundred metres up ahead, come crashing back down on to its roof, bodies tumbling out of its rear like broken dolls. The sound of the detonation arrived a moment later, a flat bass thump deadened by the rain, branches and dirt pattering down all around their own truck.

He turned back to speak to Naz, but the man wasn’t there anymore.

It occurred to Monk, in that same moment, that their truck might very well be next. He kicked open the door next to him and threw himself out of the cabin, hitting the ground with his shoulder and rolling away, before picking himself up and making straight for the cover of the trees on the same side of the road Naz had been on.

He slid down an embankment until he came to a stop against a tree, then yanked the safety off his own gun, wishing with a mixture of regret and aggravation that he’d checked it as thoroughly as Naz had his own. He tried to uplink to Command, but the security channels were all blocked.

It looked like they were on their own. He sent a signal to the truck, activating its defence protocols. He heard it shift and rumble as it reconfigured itself accordingly.

Monk waited long, tense seconds, the chirping of cicadas intermingling with the sound of the APC burning. The air meanwhile smelled of mud and burning plastic.

It was starting to look like whoever or whatever had hit the APC wasn’t going to try and blow up the truck, too, which meant they were almost certainly after the containment unit in the rear.

He heard rustling in the bushes, then spotted Naz’s back about twenty metres ahead, moving cautiously through the undergrowth towards the thin trail of greasy black smoke that betrayed the APC’s whereabouts. He was, Monk noted with disgust, intent on being a goddamn hero.

Just as Monk opened his mouth to yell, he heard a low, throbbing buzz like a chainsaw. Something flashed overhead in the same moment that Naz glanced back in Monk’s direction, after presumably hearing the same sound.

Monk instantly dropped down into the long grass and saw an aerial drone flashing through the treetops, heading towards Naz’s location. He raised his Cobra, squinting down the sight, but, before he could fire, the ground beneath Naz erupted and he disappeared in an uprush of dirt and leaves.

Chunks of wood, soil and Naz himself pattered down all around Monk, and he suddenly felt his bowels threaten to loosen.

Keep it together, Monk told himself, once again trying his best to make himself as small a target as possible. But the drone was now moving further away from his location.

Monk let out a silent sigh of relief. If the drone was anything like the ones used by ASI, it would be equipped with IR sensors, and no way was he going to be able to hide from shit like that.

Monk crouched down low, considering his options, then heard a sound he at first took for another car or truck pulling up at the roadside. The sound grew deafeningly loud, and a dark triangular shape dropped down beneath the treetops, rapidly descending towards the road. A VTOL pond-hopper, by the looks of it.

He doubled back the way he’d come, retreating along the ditch and pulling himself up the embankment once more, panting and swearing all the way. The drone had by now passed over to the other side of the road, its rotors buzzing increasingly far away as it hunted for survivors. He’d been lucky, very lucky, not to end up the same way as Naz.

Monk kept himself flat in the long grass bordering the verge of the road, his Cobra in front of him as he looked around. The truck was sitting right where he’d left it, but it had closed its doors and adopted a rounder shape by curling itself up like an armadillo, and then surrounding itself with sheafs of armour plating. He watched as the VTOL – a sleek-bodied machine with the black hawklike appearance of a military unit – sent a furious blast of air rippling across the road and through the surrounding trees, as it dropped down alongside the truck.

Monk batted leaves and grit away from him and waited, as the VTOL’s engines died down to a low hum. Before long a door cranked open in the side of the craft and two men in jumpsuits climbed down. From what he could see out of his vantage point in the long grass, they wore standard ASI air-patrol patches on their shoulders. One headed for the truck, while the other moved towards the rear of the jet.

No way are they ASI, thought Monk, watching them for a moment. The uniforms didn’t look quite right, like they’d been imperfectly faked.

Monk heard the chainsaw buzz of the drone as it circled round towards him, then saw it pass back across the road in his direction. He figured he had maybe thirty seconds before it passed over him a second time, and he was pretty sure that this time it wouldn’t fail to pick out his heat signature.

He scrambled backwards down the embankment, and pushed himself in as far as he could get between the wide, blade-like roots of a banyan tree. With any luck those thick, damp roots would block out his heat signature.

His heart thudding, he watched the drone pass overhead but, instead of blowing him to pieces like it had Naz, it kept going. Monk let his head fall back against the gnarled trunk behind him and groaned with relief. He had two, maybe two and a half minutes tops, before it came back his way a third time.