Equations of Life

32

The only cars left on the road were old: the newer majority had been conscripted by the Jihad. Petrovitch picked an ancient, rusting Skoda, one that had clearly been through several wars already, and one he knew how to take. He nodded to Madeleine, who smashed the passenger window with the steel pipe. Chips of glass exploded across the back seat, and she quickly reached through to open the door.

“It wasn’t locked,” she said.

“Yeah. Beginner’s mistake. Don’t worry about it.” He clawed at the driver’s door and helped it open with his boot. “Pole, through the steering wheel, and twist hard.”

The steering lock snapped and Petrovitch crouched down by the dashboard.

“The plastic bit under the steering column. Get your hand behind it and rip it out.”

Kneeling beside him, she reached in and tore the fascia away. She threw it behind her, and Petrovitch retrieved a nest of wires. He got his thumb through them and jerked them free.

“Okay. The two red ones. Twist the bare ends together. Now the black one; just wind it round where the other two join. Huy, check it’s not in gear.”

“How do I do that?”

He stopped and blinked. “You can’t drive?”

“No.”

“I hate to say the words ‘crash’ and ‘course’ together, but you’re about to get a crash course. Get in.”

“Why not you?”

“Because I can’t hold the steering wheel, I can barely see and I can’t work the gear stick.”

She got in, and barked her knees against the dash. “You should have stolen a bigger car.”

“Push the seat back, woman! Lever under your seat, pull it up and kick back.”

Madeleine shot back with a bang that jarred her neck.

Petrovitch ground his teeth. “Yobany stos. Put your hand on the gear stick: move it from side to side.”

“It won’t,” she said.

“Pull it down until it comes loose.”

“Done.”

“At last. My record in St. Petersburg was fifteen seconds, from brick through the window to driving away. I’m embarrassed how long this is taking.” He reached over her legs to fumble at the wires, touching a blue-shrouded cable to the spliced ends. It made fat blue sparks as he ran the frayed copper end up and down the bare metal.

The engine turned over and didn’t catch at first.

“Right foot on the gas. Lightly,” he added quickly as she stamped down, “not all the way.” He tried the wire again, and after a few asthmatic wheezes, the engine caught and spluttered into life, but always threatening to stall again. “More gas. Don’t flood the carb, though.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she yelled over the clattering roar.

“Just don’t touch anything until I’m on board.” He slammed her door shut and jogged as best as he could around the bonnet. As he slid into the passenger seat, she was fixing her seatbelt in place.

“What?” she said, looking at him looking at her.

“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.” He tried to reach behind him, and each time the pain in his shoulder made him pull back. “Okay, forget it. Handbrake.”

“Which is…” Her hands fluttered over the controls.

“Here! Behind the gear stick. Never mind.” He winced as he gripped it and gasped as he let it free. “Right. Turn the wheel all the way to the left, put it into first gear and let’s get the huy out of here.”

“And I do that…?”

“You use the clutch.”

“You know,” she said, “you’re dead bossy.”

“I’m trying to save upward of twenty-five million people. I think that allows me to do a bit of shouting.”

“Just saying. Clutch. Which one was that?”

Petrovitch rubbed his bandaged hand against his forehead. “Chyort. Left-hand pedal. All the way down. Look, don’t worry about the gears: I’ll do them.”

“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.

“Keeping us alive.”

The mechanical wheezing and gasping ceased. Even the Paradise militia were silent, their booty forgotten in a rare moment of terrified awe.

The lights looked down on them from the end of the thing’s cantilevered neck. Petrovitch tilted his gaze up.

“You know me, don’t you?” he said.

The head descended until it was the same level as Petrovitch’s. One damaged, cut, bleeding: the other vast and cold and all but indestructible.

“Look at me,” said Petrovitch. “Look at my face.” He tucked his thumb behind his ear and pulled at his dressing until it came loose. A stiff ribbon of bloody bandages looped out of his hand. “I am Samuil Petrovitch, and you need me.”

A joint groaned. A ram stuttered. It smelled of oil and electricity.

The construct crouched down, its open-framed body crushing everything below it: cars, street furniture, the road itself. It leaned forward until the heat from the lamps was scorching Petrovitch’s skin.

With a slight deflection, a grind of pulleys, its attention turned to Madeleine.

“Mine,” said Petrovitch. “She’s mine. We’re together, and we won’t be separated.”

It held the lights on her for the longest time, then with a sigh it looked up.

Petrovitch could see nothing but a smear of gray around the after-images burned onto his retinas, but he guessed what was in its sights now. He groped for Madeleine’s hand and tugged gently.

She stumbled forward into him, clutched at him and held him to her, because she had been blinded too.

“Crouch down,” he said, and they both got to their knees and pressed themselves against each other.

The Jihad-built machine started moving. The air filled with creaks and pops, squeals and bass rumbles. The ground shook, rising up beneath them, falling away again. Dust billowed, walls collapsed, metal tore, glass cracked; a gun snapped three times, and was thereafter silenced forever.

The concussions lessened, the air moved once as the great counterbalancing tail swung its spun above their heads, and it was gone, marching down a road far too narrow for it. A many-legged colossus, destroying everything in its path.

Except for Petrovitch and Madeleine.

He looked over the top of his glasses. The lights of the beast flickered away in the distance, but the sky itself was dark.