Nat peered inside from just behind her shoulder. ‘Damn—maybe they did run the thing by remote-control.’
Dutch laughed sourly. ‘That’s impossible, and you—’ she stopped mid-sentence, staring at the twisted wires and circuitry.
‘All right,’ said Nat, stepping back again, ‘not by remote-control, maybe. But there’s nothing advanced in there—it’s all tube valves and the like. The kind of primitive electronics that are the least likely to be affected by the d-field.’
She saw that he was right. ‘You’d have to stick close to the periphery, though,’ she noted. The more she looked at the elongated bundle suspended by wires, the more it resolved into something else…
A suit. Now that she could see it, under the dense tangle of wires and tubes, it was obvious. The suit contained a person. Sokoloff?
Or someone else?
She reached in past a tangle of wires and primitive circuitry and touched the suit. Judging by the smell alone, whoever—or whatever—was inside it was very dead. The face lay behind a mask with tubes protruding from the mouth and nose. She gingerly peeled back a layer of dark cloth near the neck and saw mottled, pale flesh with wires embedded into it. A layer of stubble identified Black’s gender, but it was the wrong colour to be Sokoloff.
She stepped back from the car, feeling sick. ‘He’s a cyborg or something.’
‘A what?’
‘Part machine, part human,’ she told Nat. ‘Black isn’t the car’s driver—he is the car. That’s why no one ever saw him, except maybe Sokoloff or whoever…built him.’
Nat shook his head. ‘Damnedest thing.’ He took a step back and started taking pictures with the Polaroid, while Dutch carefully retrieved the shot footage from Black’s rear-mounted camera.
* * *
They left Shinchiku behind and soon reached the first rendezvous point, next to a sewage plant. The other surviving racers had untangled the crates from their parachutes and left them with only slim pickings. Dutch tried not to think how far ahead they must be by now.
They topped up the Coupé’s engine and loaded spare canisters of gas and water into the boot. Then Dutch dug out their flare gun and sent a green star shooting high into the air so the world would know they’d reached the first checkpoint.
Using a flare gun on Teijouan, however, carried its own special risks.
They’d got the engine started when a demented roar rolled across the landscape surrounding the sewage plant. They took off with a shriek and got moving fast before whatever they’d heard came after them.
‘How long before we turn inland?’ asked Dutch.
‘The second turnoff ahead. It leads to a village fifty kilometres inland from here.’
Fifty kilometres: further into the d-field than anyone had ever been before. Or almost anyone, Dutch reminded herself.
They sped past a petrochemical complex and towards a forest spread across sloping terrain. Something huge moved through the trees at about two o’clock.
Moving to intercept them.
A Screecher burst out of the trees and into the middle of the highway, its multiple heads twisting on long, snakelike necks attached to a stumpy four-legged body. Dutch knew from experience that the creatures were half-blind in daylight, but they more than made up for it with their hearing. The Screecher’s heads twisted around as it tried to zero in on their location by the sound of their engine.
‘It’s between us and that turnoff,’ Dutch shouted.
‘Take the next right,’ said Nat. ‘I think I can plot another detour.’
She swung the wheel, the car skidding and bouncing on the uneven road surface, and they passed between low, rusty shacks that soon gave way to the remains of a small settlement, the road cracked and overgrown with weeds.
The Screecher came lumbering after them, howling its anger. She glanced in a mirror in time to see one side of an apartment block collapse into dust and rubble as the Kaiju crashed straight through it.
‘Second left,’ said Nat. ‘That’ll get us back to where we were going.’
The road opened up, the shacks replaced by tall office and residential buildings; they were back in Shinjuku’s northernmost suburbs. Before Dutch could make the turn, one of the biggest Viper-Tails she’d ever seen in her life came careening around a corner up ahead and straight towards them, probably attracted by all the noise. It reared up on its hind legs, its head level with the roof of a neighbouring office block.
Dutch slammed the Coupé to a halt. ‘Nat, I think we’re—’
Trapped, she’d meant to say: but as she spoke, she caught sight of a shopping mall occupying the ground floor of the building to their immediate left. She could just about make out daylight on the other side of the building through its shattered façade. She twisted the wheel, then drove the Coupé up a set of concrete steps and into the interior of the mall.
The ground shook beneath their wheels as the two Kaiju came thundering towards each other, the car and its human occupants entirely forgotten.
Dutch blasted past display units, steering almost by instinct in the dim half-light of the mall’s interior. ‘There!’ shouted Nat, pointing forward as they passed beneath a tall, glass-roofed atrium. ‘Ten o’clock!’
Dutch steered towards the rectangle of light and the Coupé went thumping down more steps and onto an empty and open road. Behind them, the Kaiju fell to battle, shrieking their fury as the fought for domination.
That’s it, thought Dutch. After this, I’m retiring, whatever the hell else happens.
* * *
They found their way to the turnoff and Dutch drove ten kilometres east before pulling over.
‘Let me see the map,’ she said.
This time, Nat didn’t refuse her. She studied it closely, seeing that the path of the cross-island route matched a narrow highway snaking
