Maybe there was even a world out there where her father hadn’t died too young of a premature heart attack. A world where she hadn’t had to fight her way through a succession of orphanages.
She went to sit on the hood of a derelict car and wished she had a cigarette, even though she’d given up years before.
‘I need to keep looking and see what I can find,’ said Nat, nodding at the bandana she held in one hand. ‘Mind if I borrow that?’
* * *
She listened to him clatter around inside the truck for a while, then wandered back over to the grocery store, searching around until she found several cartons of cigarettes tucked away in a dry place. She pulled a carton open and lit a cigarette from a plastic lighter she found in a drawer, then got back inside the Coupé, steering it next to the RV. Nat ducked his head out and gave her an appreciative nod, then tossed down a fat refuse bag that landed next to one wheel. Dutch got out and took a look inside the bag: he’d stuffed it full of hundreds more of the superconductor rods.
‘Looks like you got what you were looking for,’ she said, perching on the hood of the Coupé while she finished her cigarette.
‘I guess.’ He went back inside, mouth and nose still covered by Dutch’s bandana, and re-emerged with an armful of document folders. He dumped them on the hood next to Dutch. One fell open, pages of printed equations and dense handwriting flapping in a breeze.
‘So what now?’ she asked, sliding back off the hood.
Nat sorted through the folders and spread one open on the hood. ‘There’s another map here, showing the exact route to where they found these rods.’
‘You want to steal more?’
His face stiffened at the comment. ‘As many as the Coupé can carry.’ He tapped the page with a fingernail. ‘But it’s right up next to the Rift—we’d be closer to it than anyone ever thought possible.’
Dutch couldn’t make up her mind whether the idea excited or terrified her. Maybe both, she decided. ‘How far?’
‘Five, six kilometres.’
‘Sure thing,’ she said, taking a last, shaky draw on her cigarette.
He nodded. ‘We’ll find a place for the night and set out at dawn.’
Dutch ground the cigarette under one boot. ‘I wonder where the others are by now.’
‘Who? The other contestants?’
‘Nothing wrong with wondering.’ They’d be holing up for the night round about now. As soon as the sun rose they’d take the road south. The terrain from that point on was smooth and level all the way to the finishing line. Sometimes the last leg turned into a straight contest of speed, with few if any Kaiju encounters.
‘Forget about the race,’ he growled.
‘We still need to cross the finishing line eventually,’ she reminded him.
‘We’ll come in last,’ he said, loading the folders into the boot.
I’ve never come last, thought Dutch. But then again, she’d never come first either. ‘Why even bother with the subterfuge any more?’ she asked. ‘It’s not like Strugatsky doesn’t know you stole his map. He’ll know we took the shortcut—’
‘We stick to the plan, Dutch.’
‘Sure,’ she said, not looking at him. She nodded across the road. ‘There’s another hotel over there looks like it’s still intact. We can hole up there.’
‘I’m serious,’ he said, gazing at her with a fixed expression. ‘This is not about winning a race.’
‘I know,’ she said irritably. ‘I won’t bring it up again.’
He stood there unmoving for several more moments, eyes still fixed on her, then popped the hood and pulled a solenoid loose before holding it up where she could see it.
Her mouth fell open, and she laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I know you don’t trust me,’ he said, grinding the words out, ‘and I understand why. But that doesn’t mean I have to trust you either.’ He pushed the solenoid into a pocket. ‘This keeps us on the same page.’
* * *
Broken glass covered the floor of the hotel lobby, the walls decorated with posters of waving palm trees and advertisements for a local waterfall that had once been a tourist attraction. A corpse lay curled up behind the reception desk, its bones gleaming in what little moonlight found its way inside.
A number of the rooms, upon investigation, proved to be in decent enough condition, and in a few cases still retained their window-glass. Dutch found one with a double-bed that she could almost imagine had been made up in the last few hours. She tested it with her bodyweight. It creaked a little, but neither did it collapse into dust and splinters.
She sprawled back and listened to Nat moving around in the room next door, then lit another cigarette before heading back down. She’d seen a sign for a bar tucked out of sight behind the reception. To her delight, she discovered an unopened bottle of whisky.
She nodded to the corpse behind the reception desk on her way back upstairs and told it to put the whisky on her tab.
Back in her room she kicked off her boots and sipped the whisky until a warm glow worked its way inside her. Nat had fallen silent next door. She thought about her long years in prison, and then she thought some more, and then she capped the whisky before heading through to Nat’s room.
Nat lay sprawled and snoring on the bed in the next room. The window-glass had survived intact, but had been badly starred. He’d pulled ragged, half-rotted curtains closed and stripped down to a T-shirt and boxers.
He’d discarded his jacket over the back of a chair. Dutch made a fast search through his pockets but to her frustration couldn’t find the solenoid. She stared at Nat’s supine form for a moment longer, then turned towards the door.
A floorboard creaked. She looked back at Nat to
