By the time we got to the truck, Rex was on board. As we drove through the city and across the bridge into New Jersey, we talked a lot—about Wells’s presidential bid, CLAD’s bombings, the mystery flu, the sick chickens, the strange Wellplant outage, Stan Grainger’s reappearance, meeting Dymphna, Chimerica’s inaction—the conversation going in circles as we tried to make it all fit together.
We were still trying by the time we left the Smartway and were zigging and zagging through the flooded areas around Pedricktown. We were almost at Ogden’s, driving down one of the narrow roads flanked by stagnant water when Rex looked in the rearview mirror and grunted.
I turned to look back and saw a black van behind us, approaching fast.
“That better not be Sly,” I growled.
Rex shook his head. “It’s a different van. Bigger tires and higher suspension.”
It was built for driving through the zurbs, where the roads were all chunked up.
“Coming up fast,” I said. There was a faint yellow line down the middle of it, but the road was barely one lane wide. “Do they have room to pass us?”
“It’ll be tight if they try it here.”
The van pulled to within a few car lengths, close enough that I could see the windows had a reflective coating to conceal whoever was inside. Then it slowed down and gave us more space.
“It’s easing back,” I said.
Even as I said it, a hatch opened in the roof of the van and a pair of drones rose up from it and came toward us.
Rex hit the accelerator, but the van behind us kept pace as the drones flew straight toward us and disappeared overhead. A loud clunk came from the roof, and almost immediately, our truck skidded to a halt, and so did the van behind us, dust from both vehicles’ tires drifting out over the muddy water alongside the road.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
“What is it?” I said. “What’s happening?”
“Something’s commandeered the Smartdrive.”
A thick, gray cloud of mist or powder descended over us, quickly settling on the windows, all of them. In seconds the glass was covered, and the interior of the truck was dark except for the light from the dashboard.
Rex hit the windshield wipers, and we could hear them come on, but they did nothing to remove whatever was coating the windows.
I tried my door, but it was locked. I pulled the latch to unlock it, but it didn’t make any difference. “It’s overriding the door locks, too.”
Rex tried his door but got the same result.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Who do you think it is? Wells?”
“I have no idea.”
Panic rose inside me as I thought about all the horrible things Wells and his accomplices had done, and for an instant I pictured all those things being done to Rex and me. Then the truck began to move, which was totally disconcerting with no way of seeing outside and no idea who was controlling it.
Rex tried to pull some fuses from under the dashboard to see if he could make the truck stop, but apart from messing with the lights and the radio, it had no effect. After ten minutes of freaking out, the anxiety and fear of driving blind and at the mercy of some unknown entity gave way to a quieter feeling of surrender.
At fifteen minutes, we were both sitting back with our arms folded and our eyes closed. Rex said, “Jerry’s going to be pissed if we can’t get this stuff off the windows.”
A few minutes later, the truck lurched up onto some kind of ramp and kept going, a curved ramp judging from the centrifugal force that pushed us both to the right. When we finally came to a stop, Rex and I looked at each other in the darkness. Then the door locks clicked into the unlocked position.
“I guess we’re there,” Rex said.
“I guess so.”
We opened our doors and stepped out into a wide, open space with a concrete floor and ceiling, cement columns, and green walls with thin blue strips. Two sides, presumably south and west, were backlit by the sun, bright enough that we had to blink and shield our eyes after the darkness inside the truck. The other two walls were darker. Looking closer, I saw that the green was from leafy plants, lettuce or spinach or kale, taking up the walls. The blue strips were tubes of liquid, probably some kind of nutrient water.
It was a vertical farm, apparently converted from an old parking garage.
The van that had intercepted us was parked behind us. Leaning against it was a tall, striking woman with a bird splice.
Rex and I both said, “Dara!?”
We knew her from our previous experiences with Chimerica. I had met her on Lonely Island. She and Sly had helped Claudia and me escape and had been instrumental in helping take down Omnicare, and rescuing Rex. I hadn’t seen her since then.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Her mouth tugged into a half smile. “Bringing you here.”
I could feel my face darken. “That was you?”
Rex turned and looked at the truck and the charcoal-gray coating on all the windows.
“It comes off with dish soap,” she said. “A quick wash and it’ll be good as new. Or good as it was. Sorry about the cloak-and-dagger stuff. They didn’t want to risk having to find another safe house, like they did after you apparently insisted on riding up front with Sly. The costs add up, you know?”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Rex asked.
“Me,” said a voice behind us.
We turned and saw Dymphna emerging from the shadows. “I get it, you know,” she said, waving a hand. “I understand wanting to know where you are going, wanting to know what’s going on. But Chimerica’s imperatives are more important than any one person’s preferences, especially now.”
“And what are those imperatives, exactly?” I demanded. “What is all this about? Because all I see is a lot of Chimerica not doing anything.”
“Well, that’s why you’re here,” she said, with a smile. “So I can tell you what it’s all about. And so we can plan what to do next.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Dymphna led us to a table and chairs off to the side, close to one of the green walls. The furniture looked like the same as what had been at the shore house. The leaves in the section of green wall next to them fluttered as a breeze pushed through. Somewhere behind it, a window was open. She groaned slightly as she sat in one of the chairs and directed us to sit in the others.
“Coffee?” she asked as she took a sip from a mug on the table.
Rex and I both declined, and she nodded at Dara, who turned and left us, walking down the ramp we’d driven up.
I had a lot of questions, and more than a few comments, as well. But Dymphna had such a presence, such a gravity about her. You knew she was in charge, you could feel it. And you knew that she should be, too. She radiated intelligence and authority, but humility, as well. Out of respect, as angry as I was, I still let her go first.
“I’m not, by nature, a secretive person,” she said, smiling at me and then at Rex. “It’s a behavior I’ve had to learn over the years, as circumstances have warranted it. As events have shown me the importance of it. I’m sorry if you find such precautions onerous. But I’ve learned my lessons well, and these precautions have saved lives. Including my own. So…” She sat back. “I know you have questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them, but first I wanted to give you some background, so you understand what’s at stake, and so you know how we got to this point, how I got to this point. Is that okay?”