The Road Did That

May 7. Still Littleville. Dark by the time it went wrong.

Sergei — the medic — spent the last hour before the sermon asking whether burning the servers would even finish it. He'd landed on a theory: things can live in the neuroscape that didn't start there, and some of them are working on a way out into the world. He didn't say it like a man guessing. Static wanted to know if we could just cook the servers instead of torching the building. Sergei thought a fire would hand the town a reason to come together against us. Nobody disagreed.

Rock had the battery in by then. He was put out that he'd missed watching us eat — he keeps a private ledger of the things his body won't let him do, and he reads from it out loud.

The plan was thin but it was a plan. Static and Sergei around the back of the church, north corner of Ellis and Main, in the shadow. Meet at eight, when the service started. Rock parked the Buick at the intersection so we'd have a clean way out. Dustin got bored of the adult talking and went to check the back door — the Gent's reasoning being that nobody watches a back door. He came out the far side into the parking lot instead, which by then had filled up with people.

The church itself didn't have much to it. A roadside sign. A big lot. Rows of chairs inside, a neurocaster helmet set on each one. Marcos at the door, shaking hands.

Then the Buick pulled into the lot. A few heads turned. One of them was Jimmy's, and Jimmy didn't like what he saw.

The ground started moving — the same footsteps, closer than the first night. Jimmy went into the church at a run. His people went the other way, into a raised Dodge Ram, and they came out of it with handguns already up. We'd meant to take Daisy with us. That stopped being an option with guns pointed at the car. I said we leave her. The Gent said, "finally, captain obvious," and he wasn't wrong to.

We ran.

Rock drove the first stretch and took some criticism for it. We swapped him out for Dustin at speed — the kid got hung up halfway into the seat and then wasn't, and after that he drove like he'd been doing it for years. The radio was playing something with a lot of guitar in it. It kept playing.

They put rounds into the car. The back window went. One of them found my left shoulder. I logged the time out of habit and then stopped bothering.

There was a tree down across the road. Both cars went around it. The Gent wanted to throw broken glass out the back as an obstacle; I told him I'd rather shoot. So I shot, and Static shot, and the Gent shot, and all of it skidded off the truck's armor like we were throwing gravel at it. Their side didn't do any better — somebody's gun jammed.

Sergei sat there running the math on whether he could do something. Then he yelled at me to pack the wound. I did it. It was easier than watching him decide.

The road did the rest. There was loose gravel down where somebody had been working, and Dustin read it and went around it, and the truck didn't. It went over. The men riding in the bed didn't survive that, and neither did the rest of it. The Gent wanted to go back and be sure. He talked Dustin into turning around.

It was bad to look at. The Gent said Jimmy was dead like a reuben sandwich, meaning there was too much of him in too many places to argue about. We took what was worth taking. A hundred and fifty in the cab, a handgun, a magnum, a hunting rifle wedged into the seat. The Gent kept the holster, gave the magnum to Dustin, and threw me fifty dollars. I split it ten at a time down the line. Dustin handed me something for the pain. Static turned up a vanadium redox battery in the wreck, and Rock fit it into a panel he'd been saving and said it powered his walkman.

Then everybody got in the car and nobody talked.

I've spent a lot of years expecting people to be the worst version of themselves, and getting proven right often enough to keep expecting it. I sat in the back with my shoulder packed and looked at what was left on that road and felt something in me set harder, like a bone healing crooked. I'd like, once, to be wrong about this. It was night by then. We drove.