“Up ahead,” the mercie told him. “That’s the one.”
The familiar words Hope Lives filled the screen, along with an image of Ryan’s face, scanned from what looked like a sec video shot in the whitecoat hallway. As they raced toward the electronic sign, the catchphrase melted away, and was replaced by another It Won’t Be Long.
The mercie behind him gave him another jab in the back of the head. “No fucking lie,” he said.
Ryan looked at Nara. “What won’t be long?”
“Milk and honey, motherfucker,” the mercie answered for her. “Milk and honey.”
The driver of the van veered around a mass of wrecked vehicles and continued to cut left across a dozen lanes of traffic, toward an off-ramp on that side.
Ryan felt Nara tense up beside him as the driver exited the freeway. Until this point, she hadn’t seemed very concerned about their kidnapping.
“Why are we going this way?” she asked the mercie leader.
“Relax,” the man said, “everything’s under control.”
There were no overhead lights on the one-lane ramp, so the driver hit his high beams. Ahead of them, the ramp circled down in a broad arc. Outside his window, Ryan saw walls of concrete and concrete block, broken only by small, glassless, gun turret-like slits. A look across the van told Ryan it was the same story on the other side of the rampsheer gray walls.
They’d made six or seven complete circles when the headlights flashed on red. The walls from ground level to head height had been painted with a band of color. Then came the warning, in two-foot-high white letters, repeated at intervals along the wall Danger! You Are About to Enter a No-Response Zone. No Police. No Emergency Services. No Reentry without Authorization. Energized Lethal Security Systems.
The headlamps caught the cross-hatching of hurricane fence across the road, floor to ceiling, ahead. The driver leaned on his horn without slowing. Reacting to the sound, automatic gates retracted into the walls. The van rushed past them and continued to spiral down, tires squealing. Ryan counted eight more complete 360s. With every turn, Nara looked less and less pleased. The van stopped at the foot of the ramp. Right away, Ryan noticed how much hotter it was, and how the air was heavy and smelled of open fires and burning plastic.
The driver crept forward onto a flat roadway. He kept his high beams on. Seeping down through the haze of smoke, the light from mercury vapor lamps set in the concrete superstructure two stories overhead was yellow and weak. Likewise dimmed were the flashing messages on more of the huge billboards. The gridwork ceiling appeared to be the underside of an identical street directly above.
Ryan stared out at an endless sea of dirty faces. Dressed in rags and plastic bags, the mass of humanity overflowed the sidewalks and spilled into the wide street, which their sheer numbers had reduced to a single, winding lane. Ryan caught glimpses of still, limp forms on the ground at the forefront. Alive or dead, they were thoughtlessly trodden upon and kicked by those standingthere was simply no room to step around. Behind the encircling mob, both sides of the street were lined with concrete building fronts, and there wasn’t an inch of space between them.
There were plenty of windows in the otherwise featureless, gray facades, and every window was lit by erratic strobe flashes.
The mercie tour guide saw his puzzled frown and leaned forward. “The winking lights are from the tell-yous inside,” he explained. When Ryan’s expression didn’t change, he added, “Can’t get away from them, and you can’t turn them off.”
The explanation was cut short by a raucous clatter outside. From the windows on either side of the street, conventional weapons fire rained on them. The hail of bullets pelted into the van’s armored roof and sides.
“Welcome to Gloomtown,” the mercie said over the din.
Through his window, Ryan could see ragged figures dropping from the ricochets and near misses. No one bent to help them.
As the van rolled along, the blasterfire petered out, but didn’t entirely stop. Every once in a while another burst of slugs whacked into them.