Dutch thought for a minute, took a single bullet and a pistol from one of the racks, and carried them over to Elektron’s Peterbilt semi.
First, she stripped Elektron’s ride of its used film canisters, carrying them over to the Coupé and dumping them in the boot with all the rest. Then she climbed inside the semi-truck’s cabin, selecting a snub-nosed rifle from Elektron’s weapons racks that turned out to be just about the right length to wedge the gas pedal flat against the floor. She turned on the ignition and jumped back down onto the road just as the truck started to roll forward.
By the time she’d picked herself back up, the truck had burst through the road-side crash barrier, sailing off down the side of the cliff. It made a lot of noise on the way down.
She turned to see Elektron had managed to drag himself upright, one hand holding onto the crash barrier. He stared at the space where his vehicle had been, his eyes full of hatred. ‘You…’ he seemed to be unable to find the right words. ‘You…fucking…’
‘Sorry, Doc,’ she said, stepping closer to him and pushing the single bullet into his hand. ‘Couldn’t take a chance on you coming after us again.’
He stared down at the bullet. ‘What the fuck is this for?’
Dutch threw the pistol she’d selected back the way she’d come, and it slid to a halt a few metres short of the crash-barrier. ‘One bullet, one gun,’ she said, turning back to Elektron. ‘If you’re lucky, you’ll get to the next rendezvous on foot and be able to fire off a distress beacon. If you’re not lucky, something’ll eat you first.’
Elektron’s face flushed white to red to white again. ‘What the hell do I do with one bullet?’
‘Better than none.’ She shrugged. ‘Or you could shoot yourself. Either way, I don’t care.’
She got back inside the Coupé and motioned for Nat to join her. She glanced back at Elektron and saw him stumbling towards the pistol, then falling to the tarmac, his face stricken with horror. The last thing she saw before they turned the next corner was Elektron crawling towards the pistol.
‘Dutch—’ Nat started to say.
‘Shut up,’ she said, her voice thick with fury. ‘I’ve met some of the worst people in the world in jail, and right now I’d rather have their company than yours. So keep the fuck quiet and be glad you’re not fighting over that bullet with that asshole.’
He pointed up. ‘I only meant to say that Kaiju is on the way back.’
Dutch pulled the Coupé over to one side, keeping them hidden beneath some overhanging trees. The Kaiju’s shadow swept over them and kept on going, headed back to where they’d been seconds before. Dutch heard a single shot, followed by a terrified shriek, and then silence.
To The Rift
They didn’t talk for a while after that.
They reached the outskirts of Shinchiku, a medium-sized metropolis on Teijouan’s north-west coast as empty and ruined as any other on the island. Nat kept himself busy with the maps, not looking up until they coasted to a halt midway down a broad avenue.
He glanced sideways at her with a frown. ‘Why’d you stop?’
‘Up there.’ Dutch pointed at the flat roof of a building that, according to a faded sign in English and Chinese, had been a bank. A car was balanced precariously on the roof, its front wheels sticking out over the street as if something had picked it up and discarded it there. Which, she suspected, was precisely what had occurred.
‘Looks familiar,’ said Nat. ‘Hard to be sure, without seeing more than the undercarriage…’
Dutch reached into the back and searched around until her hand closed around a pair of binoculars. She raised them to her eyes and peered upwards, feeling a thrill of recognition when she saw the armoured wheels attached to the vehicle.
She dropped the binoculars back down. ‘That’s Lucifer Black’s car.’
‘Holy…’ Nat cracked his door open and leaned out, shading his eyes and peering upwards. ‘You’re right.’
Dutch snagged the Polaroid camera from under the dashboard and got out of the car. She took a quick snap of the wreck, from below and waited for the picture to develop. ‘We should go up there,’ she said.
Nat, who had stepped closer to the building, turned to look at her. ‘Both of us?’
‘This is the same asshole got you nearly trampled by Long Tall Sally,’ she reminded him. Not to mention there’s no way in hell I’m letting you out of my sight. ‘Wouldn’t you rather make sure the son of a bitch is dead?’
He stared back up at the wreck. ‘Now that you put it that way…’
She smiled to herself as she followed him over.
* * *
The building had been knocked about hard enough that at first Dutch was far from sure they’d ever find a way up to the roof, but they struck lucky, finding a stairwell in the rear that was still intact. At the top they found a door held shut by an ancient and badly rusted padlock that shattered after Nat gave it three hard kicks, coming apart in a cloud of orange dust. They made their way outside onto the roof and saw Lucifer Black’s vehicle sitting next to a concrete ventilation shaft, its rear wheels hanging out over the street below.
‘I’m amazed it took this long for his luck to run out,’ said Dutch. She thought for a moment. ‘Or hers.’
Nat’s eyes widened. ‘You think there’s a chance he’s still alive in there?’
She gave him a look.
‘Or her,’ he said, rolling his eyes.
‘I guess we’re about to find out,’ she said, handing him the Polaroid and stepping closer.
She cracked a door open and looked inside, careful not to put her weight on the car in case the pressure sent it sliding the rest of the way off the edge of the roof.
At first, Dutch couldn’t make sense of anything inside Black’s car. Instead of
