Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(75)
Prettyboy was followed by a tiny freckled girl with a jagged, cherry-red bob and what might’ve been an old 12-series-Cerberus blitzhund that had been stripped back to the combat chassis. The dog growled right at him, low and electric.
The Velocipator looked the blonde up and down. Realizing at last that she meant business—that she actually intended to steal the Thundersaurus.
“Sweetheart, do you know who this car belongs to?”
“Yeah.”
She held out her hand expectantly.
“Me.”
Turns out Zeke could drive.
As they roared out of the Wheelhouse, Ana was genuinely worried about getting out of the city alive. They’d stomped the Freebooters in the garage without too much drama—talking true, she doubted many folks in Armada would be stupid enough to try to poach the bosslady’s wheels, and the guards hadn’t really been expecting any capital T. But by the time they’d loaded Thundersaurus with spare tanks of juice and whatever supplies they could scrounge, the alarm had gone up.
As they tore out through the Wheelhouse door, at least half a dozen Freebooters opened fire from perches atop nearby ships. It was only Ezekiel’s skill at the wheel that stopped their jaunt to Babel from turning into the shortest road trip in history.
Bullets spannnged off the panels, shattered a side mirror, tap-tap-tapping against the extended rimguards as the bruisers tried to shoot out the tires. The Thundersaurus roared down a loading ramp, screeched around a sharp corner. They crashed snout-first through a series of spare-parts stalls, Lemon shouting “Sorreeeeeee!” out the window at the scattering merchants as they roared away. Bullets fell like rain, but finally, with a thunderous crash, they hit the bottom of another ramp and made it to ground level.
Thundersaurus’s engine howled in protest as they burst out through a heavy iron gate and hit the cracked concrete of the old city. Street folks scattered, hurling abuse, dust whipped up in the truck’s wake as the bullets petered out and died. Ezekiel stomped the accelerator, the truck roaring as Ana was pushed back into her seat. Kaiser stuck his head out the open window, heat-sink tongue lolling as they tore through the ruins of the Armada undercity, past the rusted hulks and subway signs and finally out onto the open road.
“Slow down!” Cricket shrieked.
“Go faster!” Lemon howled.
Grit and dirt blew in through the open window, and Ana dragged down her goggles. The engine was thunder and earthquakes, shaking her whole body, the city and their pursuers left in Thundersaurus’s dust. She looked through the rear window, saw Armada’s bizarre skyline disappearing in the haze of the setting sun. No sign of pursuit. Nothing but empty in the mirror. She whooped, hammering on the roof with her open palm and grinning.
Ezekiel turned onto a shattered freeway headed north, out toward the wastelands of the Glass. The road was pitted and potholed, but Thundersaurus’s tires were almost as big as Ana, handling all but the widest fissures with barely a bump. She turned around to check the backseat, still grinning.
“Everybody in one piece?”
“Barely.” Cricket scowled. “Slow down, you lunatic—we’re clear!”
Lemon gave her the thumbs-up as Ezekiel eased off the throttle a little. Kaiser still had his head out the window, his tail thump-thump-thumping against the seat. As the kilometers were chewed up under their wheels, Ana settled in to take stock of their gear.
They’d scrounged two assault rifles and a double-barreled sawed-off from the Freebooters they’d stomped, along with the grenade she’d rigged out of Kaiser’s thermex. Ana claimed the shotgun, strapped it to her leg. She wasn’t a great shot, and her lingering fear of guns wouldn’t help her shoot better in a crisis, so any weapon forgiving of a bad aim was a bonus. She didn’t know how well any of this gear would work against the Preacher anyway. But still, it was better than walking around with nothing but a grin on her face.
They’d snaffled an extra two barrels of juice for the engines, plus some almost clean water. Food might be a problem, but it was one that could wait. Best of all, they’d grabbed two rad-suits from the Wheelhouse supply lockers—turned out the Armada crews did regular salvage runs through the Glass and had the gear to protect themselves. The wasteland was still radioactive from the blasts that melted it in the first place, and anyone running it without proper protection was buying a one-way ticket to Cancer Town.
Ana popped out through the sunroof, hair whipping around her goggles. She squinted at the fuel barrels in the open trunk, saw a bullet hole through the one on the left.
“One of our tanks got hit during the escape,” she reported, ducking back inside and slamming the sunroof closed. “We’ve lost about a quarter of our juice.”
“This is a terrible plan,” Cricket said. “We should have our heads read.”
“Your protests are duly noted, Mister Cricket.”
“Evie, I—”
“I told you, Crick. My name is Ana.”
“Ana, then.” Cricket waved his hands as if beating away flies, still obviously upset about their argument in the workshop. “This is crazy. If what Hope told you is true, Babel has been guarded by a Daedalus Technologies garrison for almost two years. So even if we make it all the way there without this bucket breaking down—”
“Bucket?” Ana stroked the car’s seat. “Hush, you’ll hurt my baby’s feelings.”