New Taboos Read Free

bleeding. But nothing seemed broken. “Not much.”
    â€œOkay. Let’s get the pipe …”
    They picked up the still-joined pipe, carried it across the highway, half running, Steve taking the lead, like two men with a battering ram. They got it to the ditch—and both of them dived flat in the concrete ditch as headlights came around the curve of the highway ahead.
    A car hummed up, and by, headlights coming, tail-lights going, all in a moment.
    They lay there by the pipe, breathing hard, listening. No more cars.
    But Rudy thought he heard something else: a whining sound overhead. “You hear a drone?” he whispered.
    â€œMaybe … maybe so … but they’re always whizzin’ around the grounds. They’re self-guided, these around here, and cheap as shit. They don’t see much, especially in the dark.”
    Rudy doubted they didn’t see much, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t even want to think about the drones. Or the worm.
    They stood, and wrestled the pipe up to waist level. Sweat was coming out on Rudy’s forehead, burning his eyes.
    â€œCome on, Rudy, goddamnit. We keep going, we find that robot train.”
    â€œDon’t get ahead of me, you’ll pull the pipe apart, Steve.”
    They trudged along till another set of lights came, this time from behind them. They flattened and the truck rumbled by. They waited till it was around a curve, and then they started off again …
    There was a sliding, chuffing, metallic grinding sound, from behind …
    Rudy was afraid to look.
    â€œFuck,
fuck,
” Steve muttered. “They sent out the …”
    Feeling all clenched up, Rudy dropped his end of the pipe, turned—and looked.
    The worm was coming at them like a bad dream. It was about sixty feet long, its body about three feet in radius. It was multi-segmented, its outer skin a mesh tube, nickel-titanium alloy for its muscle—shape-memory alloy expanded and contracted to some internal heat-based prompt. The former IT engineer in Rudy almost admired the worm—unspeakably sophisticated inside, outside it was based on one of the most primitive of organisms. Peristaltically humping, stretching out, humping up, stretching out, it came toward them, in and out of light pole glow, a lamp on its near end for the cameras mounted in the rotating eye cluster.
    The worm was a legend at Statewide—but they knew it was real, too. They hadn’t known their own pod had one. Staff was secretive about security tech, and the lockiffers just smiled mysteriously when asked about the worm.
    Steve had always said, “That creepy smile is just to scare you. They haven’t got one here …”
    But they did.
The drone,
Rudy thought. The drone had seen them, and it had sent the worm.
    â€œFucking run!” Steve shouted, dropping the pipe.
    â€œI don’t think we should, man! We gotta surrender! We can’t outrun that thing—”
    But Steve was already running. Rudy just watched the worm coming—raising his hands over his head so its cameras could take in his surrender. Maybe that would work, maybe not.
    The worm turned its segmented metal and plastic snout toward him, reared up, seemed to hesitate a moment. Then it turned, rushed past him, humping with flashing speed, stretching with a whoosh and a
creak,
speeding up … catching up with Steve. Its mechanical body blocked Rudy’s view as it reared over Steve. One second …
    Then it slapped down. Steve’s scream was short, and sharp.
    Rudy waited where he was, keeping his shaking hands over his head. Pretty soon the lockiffer trucks came, and he shut his eyes against the glare of their headlights.
    2. JULY
    Welcome to Arizona Statewide Prison and Park Access
    Underneath those words, in much smaller letters, it said,
    A Joint Project of the McCrue Corporation and the State of Arizona.
    Faye had abundant time to look at the sign. Her old Chevy was only