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«Come on,” he said. «Let’s get our asses out of here. You know the drill. Never too long in one place.»

«Don’t you even want to know about your son?»

His look bore into her with such intensity she stopped wondering why he hadn’t asked her to remove her face paint, not once in however many years, to say nothing of her camou fatigues, so he could get a better look at her. Those x-ray eyes saw clear through to her soul, layer by layer, and when they hit bottom and came up dry, he probably figured what was the point of getting her to peel it all back. There was nothing to get closer to. She hadn’t just disappeared to the naked eye on the surface where once was a pretty, smoothly complexioned, round face with a shaved head and big brown eyes; she’d disappeared even to herself. What was left of her soul was inside Peter now. And that’s why she couldn’t let go.

«What son?» he said. «That’s your fantasy. You do what you need to carry on. Just don’t expect me to play along each time.»

Sasha realized he was just being true to himself. Whoever couldn’t hack it out here was dead to him. You were either a survivor or you were nothing. She supposed he kept himself hard and heartless because to get in touch with his feelings wouldn’t exactly be adaptive out here. Their bodies were no less steeled, what with being on the run nearly twenty–four seven.

They darted to the nearest blind in their urban jungle, an overturned jeep. Lebanon, after decades of urban warfare, bombed out, with no building entirely intact, never looked this bad. Of course, they didn’t have robospiders to deal with. All spawned from «Mother.» A suspension bridge stretching across the San Francisco Bay. They had called it The Golden Gate once upon a time. Its value to their world was more priceless than golden. Upgraded to repair itself, it spawned robospiders in response to earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks of all sorts, able to squirt «spider silk» in the form of metal strands and solder, or asphalt. Except something had gone wrong with the AI. Now it just kept spitting out babies. And those babies were no longer solely interested in maintaining the bridge. They mostly wanted to supply «Mother» with more feedstock to keep making more babies. When they weren’t busy razing humans for getting in their way.

The irony, or more appropriately speaking, the irony of ironies, the day the bridge went AWOL, abandoning its original mission, was the day someone had upgraded it to provide an energy shield that was bombproof. It was deemed the ultimate antiterrorist device. Usually claims of «ultimate» were overblown. Not in this case.

The rest was history.

She laughed inside her head somewhere, too conditioned to make disruptive noises like that on the surface. What had brought humanity to its knees in the end wasn’t a Terminator AI, some super–sentient computer with planet–wide reach; it was a God damn suspension bridge.

All there was to do now was wait for Lawrence to build up the nerve he needed to leave his wife’s side and do what he did best. Bronco ride the beast the size of a three story building. You’d think he wouldn’t need to take a moment after all this time; he must have ridden hundreds of robospiders over the years. But each time was a little more traumatizing than the last, so each time he had to clear all that crap from his mind, start afresh. She envied him his rebirthing exercise. She could never forget anything.

By the third deep breath he was on the move, climbing one of the spider’s legs faster than a cat burglar climbs the outside of a rich man’s home to get to the safe on the third story.

Once he was in the «saddle,” he quickly popped the casing in front of him and hacked his way in, using the only weapons of any value in this war, a screw driver, a pliers, and a few other workman’s tools from his tool belt. The «saddle» was part of the spider’s cephalothorax, and situated just behind the brainpan. The spider’s head came replete with electronic eyes.

«I’m in!» he shouted, indicating he had control of the spider, so she could head on up.

She didn’t have the heart to tell him, his hellacious Coney Island ride that never settled down until the beast was «broken» never came to an end on account of anything he did. It was Sasha, hacking the spider from a safe distance off that allowed him to play he–man. She couldn’t deny him his coping mechanism of being her brave provider, without whom she couldn’t survive a day out here. If he didn’t have that, he’d crumble like a house of cards.