She laughed bitterly. ‘Dumb fucking mistake.’
‘That’s why you’re here, Dutch. So we don’t make the same mistake twice.’
‘So why all the subterfuge? Why break me out of jail, instead of sending in another expedition?’
‘Word got out about what we’d found, and Wu’s afraid Strugatsky might try to grab the rest of the rods first. That means we have to be sneaky to avoid triggering him into a pre-emptive grab.’
‘You said the route starts near Shinchiku. Where, exactly?’
‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’
‘What do you think I’ll do, shoot you and steal the map?’
He favoured her with a thin smile. ‘I’d rather not find out.’
Thanks a bunch, asshole. ‘And after we find the rest of these super-whatsit rods? What then?’
‘We hide out for a while. Then we follow the route to the East Coast, and drive south to the finishing line.’
She frowned. ‘Why hide out?’
‘Because if we get back to the Security Zone in half the time it takes anyone else, it’ll be pretty obvious we found a shortcut. If we wait before rejoining the race, we’ll get there about the same time as the other teams.’
She felt a tingling in her skin. ‘But we could come first. We could—’
‘No,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘You’ve never come first in the Devil’s Run, Dutch—not once. We’re not taking any chances that might arouse suspicion.’
A sour sensation pooled in her belly. ‘Because we’re not here to win the race,’ she muttered, imitating his Australian accent.
He glared at her. ‘Correct.’
Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough to hurt. ‘Sun’s coming down,’ she said, her voice tight with fury. Driving after nightfall was too much of a risk since headlamps drew Kaiju to them like sharks to a surfer. ‘We should look for someplace safe for the night.’
* * *
They soon left the ruins of Takau behind them. Ahead lay Shinchiku, a hundred and fifty kilometres further up the coast. The first evening stars came out as she drove.
Dutch found she wanted to believe Nat, no matter how the rational part of her mind insisted a cross-island route was impossible. Even if such a thing existed, nobody had been suicidal or foolhardy enough to go searching for one. For a long time it had been little more than a myth, something rumoured but which couldn’t be real.
But if such a route did exist, whoever successfully navigated it would become an instant legend—assuming they could ever talk about it: and the idea she might not be able to do just that made Dutch want to scream. She caught Nat giving her a sidelong glance and guessed she was doing a less than stellar job of hiding her frustration.
They came to another stretch of coast road that had crumbled away, and so turned inland, following a suggested detour that led them to the remains of a small town. The d-meter flickered briefly, but continued to show low readings.
Before long Dutch threaded the Coupé through narrow streets half-blocked by debris. At one point, they got out and pushed the Coupé most of a kilometre after spotting the hulking outline of a Silverback sleeping amidst the ruins.
They were still looking for a place to hide until daybreak when they heard the dull roar of an engine a few kilometres north of their position. Dutch guessed they weren’t the only ones trying to find somewhere safe to spend the night.
They decided at last to park the Coupé inside the foyer of a hotel. Nat took care of mounting a fresh reel into the front and back cameras and loaded the footage they’d so far shot into the boot.
Most of the upper floors of the hotel had collapsed, making them inaccessible, so they crossed the road and broke into the stockroom of a neighbouring 7/11. The moon had risen, flickering as its light passed through the d-field. Even though the readings stayed low, Dutch still saw furtive shapes moving at the edges of her vision. She didn’t like being this deep in the d-field, but they had little choice.
She spread a sleeping bag on top of some flattened cardboard boxes in the stockroom. Nat took first watch sitting on the shop’s counter, a rifle by his side. She flicked through a few pages of a discarded manga by torch-light, then fell asleep almost without realising it.
* * *
Dutch came awake a short while before dawn to steady, rhythmic vibrations rolling through the ground beneath her. She rolled upright, listening until they faded. The sleeping Silverback they’d skirted earlier must have risen from its slumber.
Stepping out of the stockroom, she found Nat asleep with his back against the counter, the rifle propped by his side. Even a passing Kaiju wasn’t enough to wake him.
The moon didn’t flicker when she slipped outside and looked up at the night sky. She made her way across the road and inside the hotel foyer, her boots crunching on broken glass.
Nat had stashed the navigator’s map in the Coupé’s glove compartment, along with a second torch. She found her old bandana in there as well, and she pocketed it before spreading the map on her knees. She had to risk turning on the torch so she could see it. She saw that he had marked the safe route with a thick black line slashing more or less diagonally across the map, starting from north of Shinchiku and following a series of twisting roads through Teijouan’s central mountains to the East.
Something clattered outside the hotel, and Dutch froze, hearing scuffling movement. She switched off the torch.
She waited, lungs tight in her chest, and heard nothing more. Even so, she reached into the back of the car and took hold of a rifle. She sank low in the seat with the rifle gripped in both hands, the map discarded beside her.
‘Help me,’ cried a man’s voice, ragged and full of terror.
Dutch listened to the sound of her own breathing for a
