Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

“Won’t that hurt you?”

“I’m past caring. Chain is at least half an hour ahead of us already, and we need to go. Now!”

“Clutch down.”

Petrovitch knocked the gear stick into first. “Slowly let the clutch back out. The car will start moving forward. It’s supposed to happen. Keep your foot on the gas.”

The car skipped forward, ground its wing against the car in front, then leaped out into the road, heading straight for the opposite curb.

“Oops,” said Madeleine.

“Wheel to the right. Down the road, not across it.”

They lost both wing mirrors as they careered between two lines of parked cars. Since they were only held on with black tape, it was no great loss.

“Is this all right?” she said.

“You hear the screaming noise the engine is making?”

“What?”

“Clutch!”

He dragged the gear stick back into second, and the car jerked forward again, but faster.

Madeleine squinted out of the filthy windows as they approached a junction. “Where am I going?”

“Right,” said Petrovitch, trying to work out where they were. “Go right.”

She spun the steering wheel, and the car attempted the corner into the wide shop-lined street. The wheel banged up the curb and a lamp-post scraped a layer of paint off the passenger door. He was treated to a close-up view of several retail outlets stripped clean before they swerved back onto the tarmac. They were just about back on the road when they were confronted by a burnt-out wreck straddling the white line.

Madeleine turned to look at Petrovitch, who was busy crawling backward into his seat. They hit the obstruction on the blackened front wing and spun it out of the way. Their car rocked; metal screeched and glass broke. Then they were through.

“You haven’t told me where the brakes are,” she said as she regained a modicum of control.

“My mistake,” squeaked Petrovitch. “It’s the one in the middle. Clutch and brake at the same time.”

“That’s better. Anything else you think I might need to know?”

“Yes. The road ahead seems to be under water. So brake now.”

She stamped down hard, and the Skoda’s wheels locked in a full skid. They ended up broadside onto a dark, oily lake that stretched out down the street, deepening as it went. By the time it was lost in the distance, it was up to the first-floor windows. They stared at the drowned buildings, the note of the car’s engine rising and falling as if it was breathing.

The surface of the water was so thick with jetsam that it looked almost solid: all the debris of the river was advancing inexorably over the land with the same restless shifting of the Jihad’s motorized hordes.

“This,” said Petrovitch, “this complicates matters. Back up.”

While they sat, the water was starting to flow under them. Dark shapes swirled in front, edging ever closer.

“Reverse is where?”

“Why don’t I find it for you?” He pushed the gear lever all the way over, and forced it down. “Foot off the brake and slowly off the clutch.”

They were going backward, but Madeleine was still determinedly looking forward. Petrovitch twisted uncomfortably in his seat. Something moved across the skyline, appearing for a moment between two glass-clad towers, but due to the gathering gloom he couldn’t make out its shape.

He turned his head to see better, and his shoulder flared in warning.

“Okay, Okay. Far enough. Wheel hard round to the right.”

The rear bumper crunched against a concrete pillar, rocking the interior. Madeleine struggled to keep the engine running.

“You’re fine, you’re fine.” Petrovitch looked again at the sky. “You’re not doing badly at all.”

“For a beginner, you mean.” She sniffed and scraped at the crusted blood inside her nostrils with a ragged fingernail.

“Don’t do that while you’re moving,” he said. “Hard left. We’ll have to find a different route.”

They drove back up the road, with Petrovitch leaning forward and scanning the rooftops.

“What? What is it?”

“There’s…” He frowned. “There’s something moving out there. Something big.”

“I don’t understand.” Her distraction steered them toward an abandoned, gutted van, and she swerved at the last second to avoid it.

“Slow down. Right here.”

Again, she took the corner too wide, mounted the pavement and almost introduced the car to a set of torn steel shutters.

“Sorry.”

“Promise me you’ll get lessons before we have to do this again.”

The windscreen pocked. A matching hole appeared in the back window a second before the whole pane crazed and fell inward in a curtain of crystal.

There were people in the side street that they’d turned down, spread out in a loose line between the pavements. They had big wire-mesh trolleys stacked with looted goods, but there was clearly room for a little more.

“Where was reverse again?” asked Madeleine, and she threw herself across Petrovitch. The seatbelt caught her halfway, so she dragged him down behind her.

The windscreen disintegrated, and Petrovitch could feel three distinct impacts. One hit his seat, sending out a puff of upholstery padding. Two hit Madeleine: her armor shocked stiff and slowly relaxed, like a muscle spasming.

The car stalled and rolled forward.

“Out, out,” grunted Petrovitch, his voice muffled by his confinement.

Madeleine freed herself from her seatbelt, and kicked the door open, all the while trying to maintain the lowest position possible. Petrovitch opened his door and fell out onto the pavement.

A shot smashed the door window, right above his head. He ducked the shower of glass and started for the back of the car, spitting out sharp fragments as they trickled down his face.

“Maddy!”

She was crouched by the boot before he’d even got past the rear wheel. Another shot, another window.

“Paradise militia,” she said. “Recognize them.”

“So we run. Go.”

“You first.” She shoved him forward, then rose behind him. It wasn’t gallant, but it was expedient. She could give him cover.

He ran, doubled over, in a straight line away from the car. He got as far as the corner and slid to a halt. Madeleine knocked him flying and tumbled to the ground herself.

Petrovitch’s coat had flapped up and covered his head, but he was so befuddled, he couldn’t work out why it had gone so dark so quickly. Then he remembered why he’d stopped running in the first place. He looked up.

There was a building in the middle of the road, one he’d have sworn hadn’t been there a moment before.

He clawed his coat away. Madeleine’s legs were directly in front of him: her body was braced, her arms aloft in a fighting stance. What she was trying to protect him from was the bastard child of an industrial crane and a scorpion, five stories tall.

Hydraulics hissed and servos clicked. A leg, composed of industrial-gauge steel latticework, lifted high and swung through the air. As it descended, the tip of it gouged the road surface and punctured it, piercing the sewers below.

“ Polniy pizdets, ” he breathed. “Maddy?”

“Sam?”

Another leg traveled, demolishing a shop front and causing the whole building to fall into the street in a roar of masonry.

It had a head too, and the head had lights, culled from the front of an articulated lorry. The beams cut through the dust cloud like searchlights, and the path of illumination dropped ever lower until they were at its center.

It was so bright, it burned.

Petrovitch dragged himself upright and took his place in front of Madeleine. He held up his bandaged hand to shield his eyes.

“Sam, what are you doing?” she asked quietly.