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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: In a nuked and saddamed America late in the 21st Century, a man and a woman are on the run between unknown points on a map printed in hell. Armed to the teeth, tougher than nails, and driving a hummer that hasn't spoken in decades since its AI chip died, they do like everyone else that's left--they live from hour to hour. Now, however, they are dead on the map unless they can swap out their hummer's helium drive--and there seems to be one available, but it's in a mysterious genetics facility run by survivors of the long-ago Government. Only Taxi M'Koo would dare scale the fence, and this is her story.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Clocktower Books, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2002

22 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [76 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [99 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [46 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [403 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [50 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [108 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [117 KB] , hiebook (KML) [183 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [124 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [41 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [52 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [105 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [69 KB]
Words: 15600
Reading time: 44-62 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Taxi M'Koo drove most of the way down from Lost Angeles through the ruins. Her man Sam slept in the back of the hummer, recovering from a minor wound he'd incurred during a fight with three gangheads over a large can of ham, pristine, pre-saddam.

She'd been exploring the ruins of a long-dead library for any stray archive cubes to run in her precious player. Meanwhile, the three street toughs had followed Sam from his find and ambushed him for the ham. Arriving on the scene, Taxi had shot and killed one of the gangheads; the other two had run and never returned. Taxi and Sam laughed about the sam/ham rhyme by their fire that night. The ham had been really hammy and good, kept their stomachs full for several days. Of course even salty ham spoiled after a day in this heat, so the trick was to eat as much as you could on the first day and keep as much down as possible so you could basically sleep it off in a cave someplace with your man and your piece by your side.

The hummer began to smell funny as she passed a crumpled sign that read Oceanside. "Oh no," Taxi said, banging her half-gloved fist on the dusty dashboard. She thought she smelled smoke, very faint, from the vent grill under the dash. "Something burning in there? You better keep your mama ass temperature down, baby." The car said nothing. Of course the A.I. chips were long burned out, and the hummer hadn't spoken in probably 25 years of being patched up and traded from owner to owner.

As they neared the coast again, the heat faded. Clouds rolled in from the Pacific, and soon droplets fell in the gray air. That was usually good 'cause it cleaned the bad shit, washed it out to sea. Sixty years after being nuked and saddamed, the Earth was slowly licking its wounds clean.

There were still roads down here, but you worried when the road surfaces were slick as glass and nothing grew on them. When she got to such a stretch, she took a last heavy drag on her fat home-roller, tossed the burning butt out the window, and zipped the sides up. It was hot this way, with no air circulating, but it was better than letting dirty air roil through the cockpit, bringing with it radioactive particles or saddam spores or some shit from hell.

The hummer began to make sputtering sounds. "Oh Jesus," Taxi said, gripping the wheel with both hands and looking desperately for a way off the freeway. They were high up in the ruins of a clover leaf exchange. Although nothing grew on the glazed road surface, tall eucalyptus trees rustled darkly all around, 30 meters up or higher, which said the land below was liveable. And probably sheltered all sorts of kadaffys and mercs and who knew what else.

She shook Sam's sleeping figure. Like herself, he wore old jeans, a camo shirt, a knife, a gun, and what old purposeware he'd managed to scrounge and hang on to in his 30 years of life. They were both lucky to have a pair of solid combat boots, though they hadn't seen socks in two years or more. Had she been with him that long. He had his steel-frame, canvas rework job seat tilted back flat. He lay flat on his belly, snoring, boots hanging forward, gored and bandaged hand extended to the back seat. Taxi tugged his belt. "Hey, man, wake up, Sam. Got car trouble. This bitch is dying."

Sam sat up yawning and rubbing his eyes. "I hear it, baby. What are we going to do?"

"I'm working on a plan." Actually, she had no clue, but she didn't want him to panic. The engine kept dying, and Taxi kept kick-starting the tiny nuke engine. They rolled down an exit ramp on the clover leaf.

Toward bottom, the ramp disappeared into a green fucking swamp with gleaming water. "Oh man," Sam groaned. "Don't roll in there."

She banged her fists into the sides of the steering wheel and yelled: "Oh yeah, I'm gonna leave this car sitting in the open to get stripped by every asshole on earth. Tell me another one."

"How deep is that shit anyway?"

She braked and he got out. She checked the meters--radiation clean, spores minimal; oh, but the helium bottle that provided atomic energy to run the hummer was depleted. "We're outta juice, Sam."

"Christ, that's all we need." Lean and sparse, he walked back and forth at the waterfront. "Stinks down here."

She got out, brandishing the heavy steel tommy gun she had pinched from a drug lord in L.A. Had bullets the size of your finger, which was good; shot in all directions, which was bad; but it looked effective. "Stink is good, man. Stink means stuff lives here, even if it's got four eyes and a hook for a dick." The smell was of rotting vegetation, which told her it wasn't a flowing river, but a stagnant pool. She almost dreaded wading through this crap. "Look for water snakes."

"Don't see any," he said.