“OK. Card?”
“Yeah,” I handed it over. The bot held it in front of its eyes and videofaxed it.
Obscenity, obscenity “Hurry up!” came from behind me.
Just what I need; a nice, unobtrusive riot.
“Retina, please,” the bot said.
I gave the bot a wide-eyed stare while it videofaxed my eyes.
“Drive on around to the loading dock and have a good evening.” The smile was back on its face. The card had passed the cursory check and all was forgiven. I let out a sigh and was thankful that my actions hadn’t tripped any programs in the bot to cause it to do a detailed credit check on my card so that it would compare my retina to that of the card’s owner. As it was, when the banks discovered that the card was stolen, the authorities would be able to find out who had used the card by checking my retina pattern. But that would take a while and I would be long gone by then.
Besides, I figured my death had already shot my credit rating to hell.
I eased the van around to the back of the building and stopped. I ordered the bots to be careful when they placed the food into the back of the van. But like typical work bots, they managed to throw the packages of food around despite my instructions. Added to their clumsiness was the fact that they were all configured as pink dogs, all the while barking as they worked. As I leaned against the scarred loading dock, I made a mental note never to shop at a Happy Dog store again.
No sooner had the Happy Dogs finished than the bikers came around the corner of the building to snarl at me since I was between them and their order of synthjuana. They quit griping when I stood up to face them for a moment and pulled back my jacket to reveal the Beretta I’d stuffed into my waistband. I put the worst look I could on my face—which wasn’t hard since I was down-wind of the bikers (most bikers must develop body odor to attract attention).
The sight of the firearm brought a quick mood change; one of the greasers even flashed a reasonable imitation of the Happy Dog smile at me. Bikers can be friendly given the proper motivation. The old saw that an armed society is a polite one quickly was proven.
I didn’t hang around to see how long the transformation would last. Life in the Twenty-first Century isn’t all it’s cracked out to be, I decided as I kicked a Happy Dog bot which had apparently broken down out of the back of the van. I slammed the cargo door shut and got into the van, speeding off before the bikers could retrieve their stash.
I spent the next two hours hitting every store that had any type of supplies I might be needing.
Soon my shopping spree had the van pretty well stuffed with loot. My final stop was at a hardware store where I picked up some carbonylon rope, managing to get out just before the place was held up. No sooner had I eased through the door than the store sealed itself up with the criminals, customers, and owner inside its structure to wait until the police finally got around to checking things out. Knowing it could be days before the law arrived, I left the van parked and carefully tied everything down inside the van so that things wouldn’t fly about if I should have to do a little impromptu flying. While I wasn’t anxious to do any flying (not after seeing the world government’s fighters in the air the last time I played birdie), I figured it might allow me to shake a hi-pee if I ran into any trouble on the road.
With the gear stored as securely as I could get it (Boy Scout knots never being one of my fortes since I was always interested in the Girl Scouts), I left the Kansas City Dome and the drizzle which was starting to fall as the moisture from the hot air collected on the dome’s cool metallic under surface to drip back down onto the city. The dirty drops of rain splattering against the windshield abruptly stopped as I left the protection of the dome and was again under the open sky.
As I ventured from the area guarded by the KC police, again heading for the route that would take me to New Denver, things became wilder and slummier. Finally I was in “Troll Country,” in the no-man’s land of the old interstate 70. The four-lane wasn’t much worse than when it had been put down in the middle of the last century, but traveling the open road is always a scary proposition. And at night, it’s downright treacherous because the Night Creeps were just as bad as I’d heard.
One plus was the speed I could get out of the van with the new power system I had created.
Since there weren’t any police eyes—in working condition—on the interstate and the hi-pees didn’t patrol at night because of the danger, I didn’t have to worry about attracting undue attention. So I kept the van at an even 100 kilometers per hour with occasional peaks of 150 when it looked like it would be good not to stay in an area too long. That was my top speed since I figured any faster and I would probably plow into one of the wrecked vehicles that littered the road; any slower, I chanced getting stopped by the Night Creeps. (And even with my speed, I was forced to clip a couple of them just after I got up on the highway; that’s hard on the body of a van and leaves a nasty dent.)
The Night Creeps were out in full force. The few new vehicles that I saw on the road had been stopped by the Night Creeps; stretches of darkness were broken by the red glow of fires along the way as the vehicles were slowly dismantled and bits of their plastic bodies burned. I didn’t see any victims and didn’t slow to look. I figured it was everyone for himself for those of us who were crazy enough to be out on the interstate at night. Each of us knew we risked being eaten.
After several hours of dodging and weaving and holding my gun in sweaty fingers from time to time, I was pretty well worn out. And that meant I was starting to be careless.
I just missed hitting a black truck that was all but invisible to my headlights. It was turned on its side and blocked all of the lane I was in and extended into the shadows of the ditch. I wove around it with a screech of rubber.
As I got up my nerve and speed again and had just started to relaxed, I discovered that a group of crazies had apparently removed the bridge ahead of me. Or maybe there had been some road work the day before… If so, the Night Creeps had removed the warning signs if there had ever been any.
All of a sudden, the road ahead of me was gone and my lights showed only an empty expanse between me and the roadway across a large, shadowed chasm.
I didn’t feel at all sleepy any more. Nothing like an unexpected plunge into empty space to wake a guy up. And at 100 clicks per hour, things happen quickly.
As my van hurtled toward the edge of the abyss, I slammed on the breaks. In a long skid, I could see that there was no way I could stop in time. A group of Night Creeps was standing at the side of the road croaking and cheering as I whizzed by.
Words of wisdom formed in my mouth. Repeat your favorite four-letter word five or six times and you’ll have the general idea of what I shouted in a very heroic manner as the space between me and the end of the road quickly vanished.
Then I realized that I did have one chance: Fly! Like a bat out of Hell. At this point, I would have flapped my arms but, fortunately, had a better idea: “Computer on,” I sputtered above the squeal of the rubber.
“Yes.”
“Anti-grav mode,” I said, wishing that I hadn’t made a code to keep other people out. The road sounds quit and we were suddenly falling, weightlessly.
“Code, 3… Uh… 4… 6,” I gasped with a dry mouth. I pushed the turn signal up—the direction I wanted to go. It started blinking crazily since the anti-grav units weren’t engaged yet.
The front of the van was now pointing down as I arched through the darkness. The headlights revealed the ground that raced up to smash me. All I could hear was the purring of the engine and the sound of the wind whistling outside the van as it plunged downward.