Mark Alpert - Extinction

“Hey, this is a surprise!” she said. “I didn’t know you were a cop!”

“Excuse me?” the officer replied.

“What, you don’t remember? It was just two weeks ago! I saw you at the disco, when I came into town with my girlfriends. Come on, you don’t remember?”

The officer shook his head, but he was smiling. “No, I don’t. Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”

“Oh, you know how it is. It’s so hot already. And this old truck doesn’t have any air-conditioning, of course.” She fanned her hand in front of her face. “Are you sure you don’t remember me? I was wearing a red dress that night. And I had a different pair of glasses.”

Jim was impressed by Kirsten’s performance. She sounded just like a dippy, dopey flirt. The cop bent over, poking his head into the truck’s cab and propping his elbows on the door. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s nice to meet you.” He allowed himself a long look at Kirsten’s breasts, and Jim started to get annoyed. Then, as if sensing Jim’s discomfort, the cop pointed at him. “Is that your boyfriend?”

Kirsten laughed. “My boyfriend? Are you crazy? That’s my idiot of a brother who went out drinking with his buddies last night. And who do you think he called at seven o’clock this morning because he was too shitfaced to drive home? Not his wife, oh no. That bitch never wakes up before nine. So that’s why I’m driving his goddamn truck.”

Still smiling, the cop forgot about Jim and resumed staring at Kirsten’s chest. Meanwhile, the other young officer with greasy hair sidled up to the driver-side window. “Hey, what’s going on?” he said. “Did someone forget to get dressed this morning?”

Kirsten laughed again. “Give me a break! It’s like you’ve never seen a girl in a bra before. You policemen don’t get out much, do you?”

The second cop made a face, pretending to be offended. “No, not true! We go out every Saturday night.”

“Oh yeah?” She cocked her head, focusing on the new guy now. “Where do you go?”

“You know Zebra? The club on Yunji Road?”

“Of course I know it!” She nodded enthusiastically. “I was there just two nights ago.”

“It’s a fun place, right? You like to dance?”

“Hey, what about tonight?” the first cop interrupted. “Maybe we can meet there.”

Kirsten paused coyly. “Well, let me think. I usually don’t party with cops, you know.” She paused again, keeping her admirers waiting. “Okay, I’ll call my girlfriends and see if they can come. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you my cell number.”

The cop reached into his pockets, fumbling for a pen. But behind him, on the road’s left shoulder, the police sergeant stepped away from his patrol car and approached the three-wheeled truck. Clutching the flyer in his fist and scowling in disapproval, he snapped, “Come here!” at the younger cops, who instantly turned around and marched toward him. Jim couldn’t hear what the sergeant said to the rookies, but he saw the older man jab his finger at the pictures on the flyer.

“Time to go,” Jim whispered to Kirsten. Keeping his right hand between his thighs, he quietly cocked his pistol.

Kirsten nodded ever so slightly. Then she leaned all the way forward and stomped the gas pedal. At the same moment, Jim reached behind her with his prosthetic arm and pointed his Glock out the driver-side window. He fired the first shot over the heads of the police officers, to make them hit the deck. The three-wheeled truck was already lunging forward when he fired the second shot, which shredded the rear tire of one of the patrol cars. He took careful aim with the third shot and burst the front tire of the other police car.

An instant later, the truck was barreling down the road, its two-stroke engine screaming.

In the sudden darkness of the computer room, Layla felt a strong hand grab her wrist. Wen Hao yanked her backward and she stumbled across the room, her bare feet slipping on the linoleum. She was terrified and disoriented and couldn’t see a thing, but she could hear the wailing of the schoolboys from Lijiang and, even louder, the nonstop pounding on the other side of the locked door. It was a steel door and the lock was sturdy, but soon Layla heard more footsteps in the corridor, and then a loud, scraping, grating noise, the sound of metal grinding against metal. The Modules were using a pry bar to wrench the door out of its frame.

Wen yanked her arm again, and Layla felt the frigid air under her hospital gown. They’d entered the inner room, the one with the long rows of server racks. Wen slammed the inner door shut and threw the lock. Although they could still hear the Modules struggling to wrench open the outer door, the noises were distant and muffled now. Fortunately, the inner room wasn’t totally dark. Several LEDs glimmered on the other side of the room, from the air conditioner’s control panel, and the air conditioner itself still chugged away, blasting arctic air from its vents. Although Supreme Harmony had shut down the room’s computers, most likely moving its operations to another server hub, the cooling system was still working. It was so critical to the computers, it apparently had its own backup power supply. Water still flowed in the system’s tubes, running from the server racks to the radiator, and the radiator’s fan continued to blow cold air on the circulating fluid.

After several seconds, Layla’s eyes adjusted to the feeble light from the LEDs. Wen led the schoolboys to the corner of the room farthest from the door, then knelt beside them for a while, murmuring in Mandarin. Then he grabbed three of the down jackets hanging from the pegs on the wall. He gave two of them to the children and handed the third to Layla. She quickly donned the jacket and zipped it up, but she couldn’t stop shivering. “Don’t you want one for yourself?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m not cold.” Then he walked down the aisle between the rows of server racks, carefully surveying the inner room. Layla assumed he was trying to determine the best place to make his final stand against the Modules. He wasn’t shivering. He held the pistol in front of him as he inspected the room, and the gun in his hand was absolutely still.

Layla felt a pang of guilt. Wen was so much calmer, so much more competent than she was. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He stopped beside her. “Why do you say that?”

“I failed. I fucked up. Going to the computer room was a bad idea.”

“No, it was a good idea. It just didn’t succeed.”

“I should’ve known better. The surveillance cameras saw us go into the room. Supreme Harmony knew we were here, knew what we were trying to do. So of course it shut down the servers before we could get on the network.”

Wen shook his head. “It was still worth an attempt.”

“I don’t know. We did all that planning, but we didn’t accomplish a damn thing.”

Layla turned away from him and stared at the floor. But Wen reached out with his left hand and gently lifted her chin. “We did accomplish something. Now we can perform…” He stopped himself. “I’m sorry, I don’t know the right expression in English. We can perform a mercy. Do you understand what I mean?”

Something in the tone of his voice made Layla nervous. “No, I don’t.”

“We can choose the lesser of two evils. What Tài Hé is doing… it’s worse than death.”

Now she saw where he was going, and she didn’t like it one bit. “What, you want to kill yourself? Blow out your own brains before they can hook you up to the network?”

“I wasn’t thinking of myself. I intend to kill as many Modules as I can before I die.” He let out a long, labored breath. “I was thinking of the children. If we can’t save their lives, at least we can stop Tài Hé from desecrating their bodies.”