A woman. Young. Plain. White. Fat. Bewildered by life.

Perfect.

Okay. Plan Um.

I held up the flashlight in that underhand cop style and flicked it on.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but actually I have a pretty deep voice. “Police emergency!” I said, in as authoritarian a basso as I could manage while also reining in my chattering teeth. I flashed my American Malacological Society membership card. “License and registration, please.”

She obeyed. The license said she was Miss Kristin Dekey, 24, of Winter Haven, not that I cared, but I felt I had to look at it long enough to seem official. I tried to hand it back but she was fumbling in the between-seats thingie for the registration. The woman in the passenger seat blinked at me. She looked enough like her to be her twin sister, except all crackers look alike to me, so who knows. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” Kristin was saying, “I’m sorry, I have um, I have a proof of insurance, here, I’m not sure, the registration, I’m not sure where the registration is, is this going to be enough to, I’m sorry-”

I took the piece of paper. Pretending to look at it used up twenty seconds, but when you’re impersonating, it’s a good idea to get the subject used to the idea that you’re who you’re pretending to be before you tell them to do something unfamiliar. And the best way to do that is to put them through whatever rituals are most familiar. If you do it right, even if you’re, say, a five-foot Chinese teenager in a Gothlita dress-or if, like me, you’re covered in blood and your hair is smoldering and there’s smoking bloody charcoal scab all over your face-by the time they sign the report they’ll swear you were six foot six, wearing a full police captain’s uniform, and looked like Clint Eastwood.

I gave the paper back and took out the larger of my still-jammed phone. “One Adam thirteen,” I said into it. “I am in pursuit of suspect in a civilian ve hic le, over. Ma’am, you and your passenger must exit your ve hic le.” As normals usually do, she obeyed. Her vehicle mate took longer but also got out. Instead of both backing up, though, they sort of sought each other out and met in front of the car, standing there like they were going to confer about something. I got in and leaned over the open door.

“Ma’am, for you own safety, please step away from your vehicle.” She did. I said the same thing to her twin. Her twin did the same thing. Then, she thought of something.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“Hey, are you really a policeman?” Kristin got it together to ask, too late. I got in the rest of the way, slammed the door, reached over and slammed the passenger door, found the thingy that locks all the doors, locked all the doors, got the thing in gear, and took off.

Ahh. Freedom. I Oh, hell, I thought. I’d left my hat back in the kitchen. I thought of going back for it, realized that was ridiculous, and then got worried that just the fact that I’d considered it meant I wasn’t thinking clearly. Focus, Jedface.

Up the ramp. On the off ramp, on the other side of the highway, my abandoned Barracuda was lit up with halogen light. Above it, a helicopter swept a second light around the car in a widening spiral. Hah, I thought. They’re way behind. Way.

Onto 400. Forward. Upward. Ad astra per atrocitas. I adjusted the seat and wheel to suitable positions for nonporkers. The highway straightened out and pointed the Equinox toward the burnt-orange glow over the No-Go Zone. My hands were still shivering and my teeth were still chattering, and I was tired and light-headed, but I wasn’t quite in shock yet, and if I held on to the four quarts or so I had left, and if I kept making adrenaline, I’d keep going for another few hours. Just need to be supercareful until I find a dealer… well, the last time I heard they were selling blood packets there, so they ought to be able to get factor IX too… and maybe some thrombogen, a few burn packs… top up the O negative… hmm, while I’m at it, pick up some Oxy or at least some Hydro, and a saltshaker of the old benzoylmethylecgonine. Maybe a Glock 36 and couple of Heizer DoubleTaps, and a few hundred rounds of HydraShok. And a papered ride, of course. I just had to stay ahead of the ES people. And the way I’d set it up I knew I’d manage it. Finally my paranoia was coming in handy. I’d set up four different legends, of varying degrees of detail and remoteness, and if I cycled through all of them over the next few weeks they’d never catch up. ES was top-shelf, but nobody’s resources are unlimited. Of course, they’d be using the Game to find me, but I’d be using it to stay ahead of them. And I’d be doing it better.

I passed a row of abandoned detoxification trailers and a tossed-aside ROAD CLOSED barrier. There were more cars here, all heading to the twenty-four-hour cop-free party zone. The fugitive’s first rule is that the more people there are around, the harder it is to find the one you’re looking for.

Past eighty. Hmm. There’s a slow-pokin’ cat. I passed him on the right. I voiced the car’s “radio” onto commodities news. The Dalian and Zhengzhou had both just suspended trading. The fourth domino had tipped over right on schedule. Well, it’s out of my hands. Need to just sit back and wait.

EOE, I thought. Well, they deserve it. Factor IX indeed. They’d been planning to kill me for a long time.

And she knew it.

Marena was no damn good.

People were no damn good. Even dogs were no damn good. Even lichens were no damn good. I’d done the right thing. I was doing the right thing. I let myself feel a full blast of elation, not just the kind that comes after you make a narrow escape, but the deeper kind you get when you know your future’s assured. By the time I passed the abandoned checkpoint, I knew I’d make it. Mission good as accomplished. Fifty-two days left. Or, counting down by seconds:

Four million, four hundred and ninety-two hundred thousand and eight hundred…

Four million, four hundred and ninety-two hundred thousand, seven hundred and ninety-nine…

Four million, four hundred and ninety-two hundred thousand, seven hundred and ninety-eight…

Four million, four hundred and ninety-two hundred thousand, seven hundred and ninety-seven…

Jaguara Skull with Jade Sphere

Recovered at the Ruins of Ixnichi Sotz

Curious Antiquities of British Honduras

By Subscription Lambeth • 1831

T he world had ended eight days ago, just as Lady Koh had predicted, on 4 Earthtoadess, 5 Vampire Bat, 9.1 1.11.12.17-or, in Gregorian terms, on May 1, AD 664. Or, at least, almost everyone here-and I really mean almost everyone, that is, the entire population of Mesoamerica and large swaths of North and South America-believed that it had. Today, the eighth in the new lineage of suns had just died at 289 degrees west by southwest, and still the light on the Altiplancie Mexicana, that is, the altiplano, the Central Mexican Highlands-was a disconcerting diffuse maroon, like they say daylight looks on Venus, hadn’t changed since dawn, and it was the same as it was yesterday and the day before. The faint path curved around a stand of scrub pines and up a gentle grade toward a line of wrinkled mesas. We hadn’t seen a living person for at least a thousand rope-lengths now-a little over four miles. And we hadn’t seen a dead one for least three hundred. At least not a whole dead one. Just a few odds and ends.

We still smelled them, though. It was really true that you never got used to that cadaverine foulness, the indescribable foetor that the 1945 generation brought back from the camps riveted in the snuggest fold of their brains and which they wanted to forget more than any other memory. Rotting flesh, burning flesh, and burning rotting flesh. It’s not just the worst smell in the world. It’s truly the worst thing at all in the world. And this is in a world that’s full of unsavory things.