“Some kinda orchard,” Aleem says.
“I don’t see no fruit.”
“It’s a dead orchard.”
“What’s the point?”
“What point?”
“Point of a dead orchard?”
“No point to it. Trees just died.”
“Why they don’t cut ’em down?”
“Probably costs too much,” Aleem theorizes.
“Shitload of firewood here.”
“Can’t sell rotten termite wood. They’ll cut ’em down when they got somethin’ better they wanna do with the land.”
Most of the alleys between the tight rows of trees run east-west, but it turns out that every so often there’s one that goes north-south. Suddenly the Explorer’s brake lights flash red, and Nina whips the vehicle to the left, heading south.
Surprised, Kuba overshoots the intersection. He slams on the brakes and shifts into reverse. The tires spin, sloughing up gouts of mud. They head south in the bitch’s wake. Now, instead of walls of leafless wood flanking them, there are row ends separated by wide east-west harvesting alleys.
“Creepy damn trees,” Kuba says.
“So come back on your own time, cut ’em down.”
“What they grow here?”
“How’d I know? Peaches, apples, cantaloupes.”
“Cantaloupes don’t grow on no trees.”
“What then? They grow on tables in the market?”
Kuba says, “They grow on vines.”
“Like giant bunches of grapes, huh?”
“I seen ’em once.”
“You was high. What you seen was in that movie, space-alien seed pods, they grow imitation people in ’em. Homey, get on the bitch ’fore she’s gone.”
“I’m closin’。 I’m on her.” Kuba glances at the rearview mirror. “Shit. What we got now is we got a five-car caravan.”
Aleem checks the side mirror and sees that the three other SUVs in the squadron have turned into this same southbound alley.
“They don’t get parallel real quick,” Kuba says, “she can go anywhere.”
Even as he speaks, the three trailing vehicles peel off into intersecting alleys, two eastbound and one westbound, the drivers urgently looking for other north-south passages on which they can get parallel to the Explorer.
“It’s a maze,” Aleem says.
Kuba says, “It’s a graveyard. Like wood tombstones. Spooks me.”
“Nothin’ dead here but trees.”
“They say trees got spirits.”
“What spirits?”
“Like souls.”
“Who says?”
“Some people.”
Aleem says dismissively, “Tricks who sniff an elbow of flake every day.”
“No, smart people. On this podcast.”
“You got a health app, now you listen to podcasts?”
“Just the one podcast.”
“When you goin’ to college, get a degree, put on a suit, be a hornologist, teach everyone about trees?”
“The word ain’t ‘hornologist.’”
“So what might the word be, professor?”
“All I’m sayin’ is if trees got souls, this place is totally fuckin’ haunted.”
“You don’t know the word. Forget souls. Just kick it up and ram the bitch.”
“You feel the shimmy? Turf’s turnin’ slick as ice. I kick this humper up any more, she’ll spin out.”
“Kick her up,” Aleem insists. “It can’t fly, it shouldn’t be called ‘Aviator.’”
Kuba’s concern proves to be a premonition of sorts. Ahead, the Explorer fishtails right, left, right, tree shadows leaping like spirits trying to escape the dead wood in which they have long been imprisoned. The rear passenger-side bumper clips a tree trunk.
“Ram the bitch!” Aleem shouts. “Ram her, RAM HER!”
REMOTE CONTROL
The dinner hour is well past and the evening maturing. Michael is checking out the contents of the freezer compartments in the two large Sub-Zero refrigerators, in need of something more than cheese and crackers, when the words THE NINTH HOUR, in blue neon, stream into his mind’s eye.
He closes the freezer drawer and turns to the kitchen island and places his hands palms down on the granite top, which is cool and hard and real. He enters the Verizon telecommunications network as easily as opening a door, translates Nina’s smartphone number into binary code, projects it into the system, and John answers on the first ring, all in seven seconds.
John and his mother are in serious trouble, but the boy is calm. “Four SUVs are after us. I don’t know how many gangbangers, like a whole army. We’re in San Diego County—”
“I know,” Michael says, for he has entered the navigation app on Nina’s phone. The map display that appears in his mind shows their blinking signifier to be two hundred yards from the nearest paved route, a state highway, and moving fast. He switches on their speakerphone feature, so Nina can hear him. “I know where you are, but why have you gone off-road?”
“Roadblock,” John says. “We split into this orchard. A huge, freakin’ dead orchard. Just sideswiped a tree, but we’re okay.”
Nina says, “We must be tagged. They’re all around us, trying to cut us off.”
“Stay cool,” Michael advises.
He summons a second display that glows in his mind’s eye softly beside the first, this one from the international GPS monitoring system, framing the same plot of land through which Nina is racing. Fortunately, it’s very lonely territory; there aren’t a confusing multitude of blinking signifiers, only thirteen. Her vehicle—actually her iPhone—emits only one; the Explorer is too old to have a navigation system. Each of the other SUVs issues three signals. In every case, one ID number on the display is that of the vehicle, and the other two represent smartphones carried by the occupants.
Aleem has marshalled seven of his homeboys to help him snatch John and do God knows what to Nina. More likely than not, mother and son will both end up dead, because the boy won’t be taken easily or let them harm Nina without going to her defense.
“Aleem and seven others,” he tells them. “Keep moving while I deal with this. Keep moving, or you’re finished.”
The United States government—and most others in this age that is sliding toward universal tyranny—has instituted a clandestine vehicle-control project that, like everything else, is no secret to Michael Mace since his resurrection. Years earlier, when it was recognized that the technology would soon exist to equip all new cars and trucks with a kill switch that could disable the engine via a microwave-carried command linked to the vehicle’s GPS identifier, defenders of liberty protested vigorously. All politicians wishing to appear righteous swore that this outrage would never be committed as long as they drew breath. Some remain unaware that it’s been done through the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency, while others are aware and comforted by the knowledge. This power of “mobility restriction” has not been—and will not be—revealed for any ordinary law-enforcement purpose, such as foiling a carjacking or bank robbery or to stop a child abductor in flight with his prey. It must remain secret, so that should the country ever experience a serious insurrection, those in rebellion will be surprised and disempowered when the wheels they rely on will turn no more.