Take the All-Mart! - By J. I. Greco Page 0,43
with Roxanne. He won’t give up until he finds her. After that, it’s anybody’s guess how long the obsession will last. Usually until right before a wedding or he spots some new chick, but we’ll be out of here long before that happens.”
“So what if we do find her? She’ll be a zombie. Just like all of them...” Bernice’s voice trailed off with a shiver.
“We don’t know that. And even if she is, they’re just nanochines. They can be turned off.”
“How? Electric shock every five minutes for the rest of her life?”
“Plenty of ways,” Rudy said, grinning. “Permanent ways. Look at me... my chem factory’s already fought off the second wave.”
“She doesn’t have a chem factory.”
“No, but we find her, we can EMP her. One good electro-magnetic pulse should fry her nanochines. Or we get her a blood transfusion. Or I brew her up a cocktail of chems to fight them. Or shit, she’s got a mind-machine interface — maybe Trip could go in and just order them to shut down.”
Bernice’s face went just the tiniest bit optimistic. “Would that really work?”
“If he can get past any security layers they have over their command structure, sure. Probably. Maybe — he’s fifty-fifty on breaking security. Okay, thirty-seventy. But my point is, there are plenty of ways to do it. If we find Roxanne, we can bring her back. And not as a zombie.”
Bernice nodded. “Okay. But how about the rest?”
“The Sisters?”
“Yeah. If we can save Rox, we can save them too, right?”
“If we can find them. At least with Roxanne, we have a general idea where she might be. The others... they could be scattered who knows where by now. Could take weeks... months...” He stopped himself as he saw the effect his words were having on her, that hint of optimism in her eyes fading fast. “If we can... we will. If not now, we’ll come back.”
Bernice just barely smiled, but she smiled. Rudy leaned in to kiss her.
The Wound’s horn went off. Several times in short, impatient bursts. Killed the moment. Bernice scowling, Rudy’s face sagging in disappointment, they both looked back towards the Wound.
Trip’s head poked out through the window, cigarette dangling from his lips. “You done yakking up?”
“Yeah.” Bernice used Rudy’s shoulder to get to her feet. “But now I really do have to pee. All that beer.”
“Well, get pissing,” Trip said. “Bob says were close. And he filled me in on some of what to expect, security-wise.”
Rudy stood, walked up to Trip. “What are we up against?”
“We’re gonna need the goody bag.”
CHAPTER 15: STRATEGY
“Origin.” Bob’s chin rested on the back of the Wound’s front seat as he stared out the windshield between Trip and Rudy. His voice was breathless with longing. “Isn’t it... wonderful?”
Bernice answered his question by shoving the stun baton into his side and chuckling as he convulsed back.
“For a shantytown, yeah, I guess.” Trip lit a cigarette and shrugged.
The Wound idled at the edge of a five mile-wide stretch of barren concrete, at the center of which hulked the massive city of Origin. A mile wide, it was a maze of hovels with walls made out of repurposed shelving racks covered with a mishmash of clothing remnants.
“Looks like a fortress designed by Giger and filmed by David Lynch.” Rudy lit his calabash. “You sure she’s in there?” he asked Trip.
“Nope.” Trip glanced into the rear-view. “Bernice, how’s your confidence level? Roxanne in there somewhere?”
She shrugged at him. “How should I know?”
“Woman’s intuition, maybe?”
“It’s on the fritz.”
Trip jogged his head out at Origin. “But that is in the direction they took Roxanne?”
“Maybe,” Bernice said. “I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Leave her alone, dude,” Rudy said.
Trip grunted. “Bob? Any thoughts?”
“If they took her to the Voice, the Voice is there.”
Trip tapped ashes out his window. “Where’s ‘there’? I mean, specifically?”
“The Hub.”
Rudy pointed with his pipe out at the city and a quarter-mile thick tree-like structure at its center, branches rising to the ceiling and intertwined with it. “That central tower?”
“Yes,” Bob said. “It is the heart of the All-Mart.”
“How’re the defenses?”
Bob leaned forward, keeping a wary eye on Bernice. “I’ve never been inside, but any that live within Origin would gladly give their life to protect it.”
“Of course they would,” Rudy said.
“Which brings us to the second item on the agenda.” Trip flicked his cigarette out through the window and reached under his seat. “Strategy time.” He came back up with a battered Monopoly box in his hand. Rudy scooted up against the passenger side door to make