Extinction

away from this place.”

Wen nodded in agreement, a look of enormous relief on his face. Striding to the schoolboys, he crouched beside them and gave orders in Mandarin. He smiled as he told the boys what to do, and when he was finished, he playfully slapped them on the back.

The nine-year-old entered the duct first, lowering his head to crawl into the vent. The older boy followed, scuttling on his elbows and knees. As they disappeared, Layla heard the scraping, grating noises again, coming from behind her. The Modules had applied their tools to the inner door and were gradually prying it out of its frame.

Wen turned to her and Layla saw that his gun was back in his right hand. But in his left hand, unexpectedly, was a pair of cheap running shoes. They were his shoes, she realized. He’d taken them off.

“Here, you’ll need these,” he said, thrusting the shoes at her. “And don’t forget your gun. I have two pistols and that should be enough.”

“Wait, what are you—”

“You have to go with the boys,” he said firmly, pointing at the vent. “You’re not much bigger than they are, so you’ll fit inside the duct. Just take off your jacket and push it in front of you.”

“But what about you? I can’t leave you here!”

He shook his head. “I’m too big. I’ll get stuck.”

“You have to try! If I can make it, then you—”

“No!” he shouted. His voice echoed against the walls. “The most important thing is the safety of the children. You have to help them escape. And I have to stay here and stop the Modules from following you.” He removed his second pistol from the back of his pants. “If I take cover behind the computers, I can keep them pinned down for a while. Maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty. That should be enough to give you a head start.”

Wen looked at her intently. Layla opened her mouth to continue arguing with him, but his expression stopped her. It wasn’t an angry look. It was more like the look she used to see on her father’s face when he asked her to do something important, like visiting her grandmother in the nursing home or standing up for the national anthem. Wen was reminding her that she had a responsibility. She had to live up to it. She couldn’t turn away.

Layla took off the down jacket and put on Wen’s shoes. She didn’t say goodbye. She just couldn’t do it. But just before she climbed into the vent she looked over her shoulder. The last thing she saw was Wen’s bare feet, which glowed for a moment in the room’s feeble light as he took cover behind the server racks.

That image stayed in her mind as she crawled through the duct, pushing the jacket with her left hand and holding the gun in her right. She didn’t know why she kept thinking about it. She should be remembering Wen’s face, the smooth handsome face she’d kissed. But, instead, she saw his feet, which seemed to float in the pitch- black darkness in front of her.

And then she heard the gunfire start in the inner room, booming so loudly that it made the air duct quiver, and Layla could think of nothing except scrambling forward.

FIFTY-EIGHT

The road into Yichang was broad and new, with three lanes in each direction, and fortunately it was downhill all the way. The slope allowed the three-wheeled truck to build up speed despite its small engine. Soon it was flying down Fazhan Avenue at eighty miles per hour, rushing past the factories and warehouses on the city’s outskirts.

Jim glanced at Kirsten, who’d slipped back into her bloodstained blouse. Luckily, she was a superb driver, and now she was pulling out all the stops. About two miles past the checkpoint they came to an intersection where a dozen slow-moving cars blocked all three lanes. Jim yelled, “Watch it!” but Kirsten didn’t slow down. Instead, she swerved into one of the oncoming lanes and whipped around the traffic. They needed to haul ass until they reached downtown Yichang; once they got there, they could ditch the truck in one of the alleys near the riverfront and find a hiding place where they could hole up until nightfall. But the downtown was still five miles away, and Jim could hear sirens in the distance.

After another minute they saw police cars up ahead. Four black-and-white cruisers rolled into the next intersection, about a quarter mile in front of them, and stopped in the middle of the road. The cops spaced the cars evenly, one in front of the other, so that they blocked all the traffic lanes, both inbound and outbound. There was nothing to do except turn around, but when Jim looked over his shoulder he saw four more patrol cars behind them. “Shit!” he yelled. “We’re trapped!”

Kirsten lifted her foot off the accelerator. “Should we stop? Get out of the truck and make a run for it?”

In frustration Jim smacked his prosthesis against the passenger-side door, and the truck’s narrow chassis rattled. But as he stared at the police cruisers blocking the road, he noticed something. The front bumper of the patrol car that blocked the right lane was about four feet behind the rear bumper of the car in the left lane. The gap between them was way too small for an ordinary car or truck to slip through, but the three-wheeler’s cab was only four feet wide. “Don’t stop!” he yelled, pointing at the gap. “Go right between them!”

“Jesus! Are you nuts?”

“Just do it!”

Frowning mightily, Kirsten adjusted the steering wheel, carefully aiming the truck’s nose. Jim leaned out the window and fired his Glock, putting the shot above the roofs of the cruisers. As he’d hoped, the police officers leaped out of their cars and scattered. Then Jim ducked back inside the cab and braced himself.

It was like driving full speed through a car wash. The bumpers of the police cruisers passed within inches of the truck’s doors. The cab sped through the gap without a scratch, but the truck bed smashed into a headlight. The rear end of the truck lurched to the left, and for a heart-stopping second the three-wheeler became a two- wheeler. But then the right rear wheel fell back to the asphalt, and after a hard bounce the truck straightened out.

“Holy fuck!” Kristen yelled. “Look behind!”

Jim turned around and noticed that the bale of hay wasn’t in the truck bed anymore. After being jolted into the air by the sideswipe, it came crashing down on the hood of one of the cruisers. The bale disintegrated on impact, showering the whole intersection with dried grass.

“Bull’s-eye!” he shouted. He was so ecstatic he kissed Kirsten on the cheek. “Nice driving, Kir. Keep it up and I’ll buy you a new blouse.”

She smiled but didn’t say anything. Another intersection was up ahead, and six more cruisers were speeding toward it from the left. Kirsten hit the gas again, pressing the pedal to the floor. Soon they were going at least ninety miles per hour, faster than any three-wheeled truck had ever gone, and they blasted through the intersection just ahead of the patrol cars.

Then the road leveled out and began to slope upward. About half a mile ahead, a high tree-covered ridge rose abruptly from the urban landscape. Jim peered at the hill through the truck’s windshield, trying to see if the road went over or around it. Then he noticed a concrete rectangle at the base of the ridge.

“It’s a tunnel,” he said. “We have to go through that tunnel to get to the downtown.”

Kirsten shook her head. “Damn it! They’ll stop us there for sure!”

“Well, we can’t turn around.” He pointed over his shoulder at the half-dozen cruisers that were about two hundred yards behind them.

“Shit, shit, shit! This is one hell of a vacation you booked, Pierce!”

She was still cursing as they sped into the tunnel’s entrance. Jim noticed that the traffic in the outbound lanes was much heavier than the inbound traffic. At any moment he expected to see the flashing lights of a police blockade inside the tunnel, but there was nothing but headlights and taillights ahead of them. And after a few seconds, he noticed that there were no flashing lights behind them either.

“That’s strange,” he said. “It looks like the cops didn’t follow us into the tunnel.”

“They don’t need to,” Kirsten replied. “The whole goddamn police force is probably waiting for us at the