Macaque Attack by Gareth L. Powell Page B

see a small town on the far bank, and a distant church tower. At each end of the bridge, barbed wire had been strewn across the road. The middle section of the bridge had collapsed into the water, leaving a tangled mess of girders and concrete. If he could somehow get across, he might be able to shake off his pursuers. Even a temporary reprieve would give him time to take stock, to look around and figure out how he’d get a message to Victoria. He was sure she’d be looking for him, but had no idea how she’d find him. Even if she somehow traced him to this new world, how would she know where he was hiding, and how could he let her know without giving his position away to the cyborgs on his trail?
    He shivered, and pulled his sodden jacket tighter. The cottage smelled of damp and ashes. A few sticks of charred furniture remained. Every time he moved his feet, his boots crunched on shards of broken glass and crockery. Outside, rain fell from a bruised sky, pocking the surface of the river. The wind whipped dead leaves across the road. Thunder rumbled in the overcast.
    When he’d woken up this morning, getting trapped in a post-apocalyptic wasteland hadn’t been high on his list of things to do—and yet, here he was. One instant he’d been charging the figure in the office, keeping low to avoid bullets. The next, he’d been rolling and sprawling on the shiny white floor of a different laboratory, on a different world altogether. The black-clad version of Célestine lay beside him on the tiles, winded, sucking in air. Behind them, the portal died, its light sputtering out like a dying candle. For long moments, Ack-Ack Macaque lay looking up at the strip lights. Then a squad of soldiers entered the room and he took flight, leaping through a window and hurling himself away, into the ruins of an industrial park.
    Now, hours later, he was wet, cold and hungry, and the bastards were still chasing him.
    “I should have stood and fought,” he grumbled, but he knew he couldn’t have won. The soldiers hadn’t been human. Each had displayed the unnaturally smooth features, the waxy, sepia-coloured skin and tall, graceful builds he remembered from the last time he’d tangled with one of Nguyen’s cyborgs, back on his own timeline. They were human back-ups running on gelware brains, housed inside bodies equipped with titanium skulls and carbon fibre skeletons. One of them had been tough to kill; a whole squad would have been next to impossible. And so he’d run, and kept running.
    Now, he needed food, ammunition and allies, and he needed time to think, to work out where he was and how he could find his friends—but he couldn’t do any of that until he got away from his pursuers.
    He’d skirted several villages and suburbs, crossed half a dozen major roads, and had yet to meet a single human. Where was everybody? Thunder cracked and rolled, almost directly overhead. He could feel the rumble of it in his chest. He scratched at the leather patch covering his left eye socket, and yawned. If his geography was correct, the forest of Sénart lay a kilometre or so east of the river and, if he could only get to the trees, they’d never catch him.
    First, though, he had to get across the river. It was too wide to swim, and looked to be running fast, swollen with rainwater. The broken bridge was his only option. It was a modern, two-lane highway with little in the way of cover, only steel railings on either side.
    Well, I can’t stay here.
    He stood and slithered over the windowsill, back out into the rain. Nguyen’s cyborgs were fast, and he’d have to keep moving if he wanted to stay ahead of them.
    Before him, the bridge looked empty and wide. If he tried to run across, he’d be plainly visible to anybody on either bank, and exposed to whatever weaponry they cared to turn in his direction.
    But did he have to go over the bridge? Seized by a sudden idea, he ran on all fours, scampering to the edge of the carriageway and down a