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She crumpled, knocked sideways, and Carson leapt over her, pushing the stud on the pod’s activation card as he did so. The pod’s door slid open and the engine purred into life. He dived into the drive seat. “Close door. Engaged locks,” he yelled, as he brought up the power and accelerated across the gravel. In the rear-view monitor as he screeched out the onto the hotel’s driveway and the three surfer types scrambled to avoid being run down, Carson saw the infected from the pod park crowding out behind him. They weren’t running to catch him, or attempting to stop him, they just watched as he turned out of the driveway and onto the main road. At the forefront of the group stood Helena MacDonald: her smile gone. Carson floored the accelerator, desperate for the pod to go faster than its suppressor would allow. The pod’s onboard CPU automatically restricted its burn rate to the posted, legal speed limit. The SatNav chirped and requested input. He slapped the unit off: its bland, synthetic voice too close to a reminder of humanity’s fate. He would pilot the pod manually until he was clear of the village. As he looked up, Carson noticed the people at the roadside. “What the hell are they doing?” he asked, as he looked around. From all sides the people of the village were stepping out of their homes; climbing from parked pods; leaving the pubs and restaurants to gather at the roadside and stare. They were like people shaped security cameras, their eyes following his progress, cataloguing his movements and reporting back: each one nothing more than a single component of the whole new post human organism. No expression marred their watchful faces. Nothing betrayed their thoughts. There were no shouts to stop. No one tried to halt or hinder his escape. It scared the shit out of Carson. As he left the village and its inhabitants behind, Carson breathed a sigh of relief. He drove randomly, turning the pod into one old-style country lane after another. The sound of the close-set hedges whipping against the sides of the pod increased as the virtual proximity net relaxed the engine suppression and allowed it to pick up speed. He had no destination in mind. After forty minutes of keeping to lesser travelled highways and byways, Carson pulled the pod over to the side of the road and looked around him. He had no idea where he was. Hedges and fields surrounded the pod. Carson booted up the SatNav and waited while it up-linked to the local navigation grid. The pod was running low on charge and he didn’t want the batteries to flat-line on him in the middle of nowhere. It was time to figure out where he was and where he was going. The last thing he wanted was to pop up on their weird psychic radar. The navigation unit chimed and provided him with a GPS grid reference. It identified three possible destinations based upon the pod’s charge level. None of them was ideal, but they would afford him a chance to gather intelligence and formulate a plan. His Tablet would allow him access to the news-net. There had to be others like him: people who would fight what was happening. As much as the thought of joining up galled him, he knew from Mallory that John Bartley and his ilk were still out there. There had to be another option beyond evolve or die. All he needed was time. Selecting the least obvious choice of the three, Carson sat back and let the Nav unit take over. The whir of the pod and the gentle rocking of its air-cushion suspension acted like a soporific on his over-stressed mind and, although he fought to stay awake, Carson was soon asleep. His dreams were filled with the infected. They lined the streets, silently watching, as if to tell him there was no escape, no future, no hope, but the one designed by them. When he awoke it was night and the pod was parked in a dark side street. He rubbed the crust of sleep from his eyes and looked around. Other than the hum of the pod’s engine it was dead quiet and the intermittent, overhead glow globes provided very little illumination. Carson checked his timepiece. It was a quarter to one. No wonder it’s so quiet, he thought. He sat up and stretched. It felt like he had spent a month scrunched up in the pod’s seat: proof flow-form was not all the manufactures’ claimed. Carson deactivated the pod, opened the door and stepped out. He arched his back, pushing the kinks out of his spine, and rolled his head to ease the stiffness in his neck. If the SatNav had followed his instructions he should be outside a B&B, although whether the owner would be inclined to open up at this hour was anybody’s guess. Only one way to find out, he thought. As he turned to shut the pod’s door, Carson heard the sound of footsteps from behind him and paused. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two people walking towards him. They looked to be a young couple, early twenties, nothing out the ordinary, but after what he’d seen in Croyde he wasn’t going to take any chances. Leaving the vehicle’s door wide, Carson made a show of rummaging in the pod, whilst he kept an eye on the approaching man and woman. Hand in hand they dawdled along. Slowing down. “Come on,” he whispered, willing them to keep moving. “Don’t stop now. Just keep going.” The couple were six metres away. “That’s it,” he said. Then, “No, no, no.” They were definitely slowing down. This was wrong. Every instinct screamed at him. Carson’s heart pounded in his chest and a cold sweat bathed his body. He felt a vibration, a subsonic rumble, or disturbance, pass through the night as the couple stopped and stared, and all along the street doors began to open.
Keeping his movements casual, as if nothing was wrong, Carson
climbed back into the drive seat and manually engaged the door
locks. His hands shook as he fumbled the key card from his pocket.
He depressed the activation stud and, as the engine powered up,
Carson realised he had nowhere to go. |