“Arch!” shouted the driver. He rushed forward to help, and the two other prowlers turned on him, approaching, bodies poised to pounce. He backed up.
The man in the dirt screamed as the thing bit into his neck. A cloud of dust kicked up in the headlights. Two other people got out of the cars, but the driver yelled, “Get back in! He’s gone! We’ve got to get out of here!” H124 saw more shapes snaking down the embankment. The driver saw them, too, and as his friend stopped screaming, he raced back to his car and slammed the door. The prowlers gave chase, but he got inside just in time.
The three cars roared off, speeding down the interstate. She whirled around, starting up her own car. She kept the headlights off, but even in the pitch-darkness she could see more figures streaking down the embankment, silhouetted against the open sky.
She backed up and accelerated toward the road as several closed in on her. She heard the thump of one striking the back of the car as she hurtled onto the road, speeding away. In her rearview mirror she saw a lone prowler standing on the shoulder. Then it loped back to where the dead man lay.
Night stalkers, they’d called them. What the hell were they?
She drove on, not wanting to turn her headlights on. Behind her she could see the vanishing red taillights of the other three cars. She drove slowly, keeping the car in motion in the center of the road, not going fast enough to damage it if she hit something. She imagined those things loping down the road after her, and as soon as the taillights vanished, she flipped on the headlights. Light flooded the road, and she floored it.
She crested a rise and came to an area where the road cut through small, rolling hills. She drove for hours across the undulating terrain. Briefly the moon peeked out from the clouds, and for a few minutes she caught glimpses of tall buildings in ruined cities along either side of the road. Desolation settled in on her. The only other humans she’d seen since Rowan and she’d had to flee from the city. She wondered what they would have done if they’d found her. Taken her car and left her there? Taken her too? Killed her? She remembered Rowan warning her to not let them know she was a worker, that they would torture her for her knowledge of PPC-run cities.
By the time she reached the coordinates for the next weather shelter, her eyes burned with exhaustion. The sun hung low in the west, lighting up some towering thunderheads in gold, red, and pink. She opened the car door, stepped out, and stretched. The X on the shelter map showed a spot she hoped was safe to stash the car. She pulled out her PRD, navigating toward the X. But when she got there, she stared out at a collapsed warehouse. She crawled into it, digging through the rubble, wondering if maybe a door led to an underground garage. But she didn’t find anything. In the end, she dragged several huge pieces of sheet metal out of the warehouse and propped them up against two abandoned vehicles on the street. Then she drove her car beneath the sheets, getting it out of the weather, and hopefully out of sight of anyone driving along the roads.
She switched the PRD’s coordinates to take her to the weather shelter, slinging her tool bag over her shoulder. She followed the blinking arrow, which brought her to a narrow alley cluttered with fallen mortar, bricks, and ancient rusted hulks of steel. She scrambled over the crumbling stonework, at last coming to a set of cement stairs that descended to a sunken doorway. She spotted the familiar weather shelter sign, the funnel next to the running man. She stepped over a rusted I-beam that lay across the top of the stairs, then half slid down a pile of disintegrating stonework that choked the stairwell. She heard the rumble of thunder in the distance.
At the bottom of the stairs, a metal door laden with holes blocked her way. She shoved all her weight against it, and it squeaked on rusted hinges. Finally, it creaked open just enough for her to slip through.
Darkness gathered in the next room, so she pulled out her headlamp and switched it on. She played the beam over the remains of the building. The ceiling had caved in, but someone had cleared a path through the rubble. At its far end, she spotted the familiar keypad. Sending the beam over the walls, wary of night stalkers, she hurried to the far end of the room. Bringing up the code Rowan had given her, she entered the numbers on the keypad, and the door slid open. She let out a sigh of relief.
She walked inside, and the door slid shut behind her. A quick circuit of the room revealed that no one else was inside. The layout was identical to the first shelter she’d been in. Books lined one wall, and she went to these first. True to what Rowan had said about the inventory differing, she didn’t recognize any of the titles. It was a completely new set of books. She set her tool bag down on the small table. Then she scanned the book titles.
One caught her eye at once.
