Dateline

New Year's Eve, 2100 local / T plus 16 hours

Outside Littlerock, California

It had taken Kelly Yang just over two hours to get out of Los Angeles and over the mountains on the Antelope Valley Freeway, and she had just turned off onto route 122 when things turned bad. 

She had hoped to avoid Palmdale and Lancaster, partly because she thought the routes to Palmdale airport might be backed up, and also because Lancaster was the largest conurbation on the most direct route. She figured that by the time darkness fell, lawlessness and panic would make places with a large populous more dangerous. By taking the Pearblossom Highway past Littlerock, she would lessen the risk of running into trouble. 

But now trouble had found her.

Just outside Littlerock, not half a mile from where the road turned north on a bee-line to Edwards across the desert, they met a queue of traffic. Ahead, on a bridge spanning a wash-out, there were men with guns. She could see them in the glare of spotlights raised on extending poles. 

"Stay calm, honey, mom will back in a second." Checking that her daughter was secure in the car seat behind her, Kelly got out and went to the trunk, the routed about in the back until she found what she was looking for; a map, and a pair of binoculars.

Once back inside, she shut and locked the doors, thankful that she had thought to take one of the company hacks; a Volta SUV in pseudo-military spec. It wasn't road legal, but the labs had acres of rough ground around them, and Able had wanted some testing done before he took the concept to the military. Mostly the 4x4 had been used by the lab techs to hold impromptu off road races behind the labs until one of the directors got the hump about the dust and banned them from using it. Since then it had been little used and almost forgotten about. It had taken Kelly fifteen panicky minutes to break into the directors desk to find the key fob, and another ten minutes to walk to the garage to get it. Thankfully it had been plugged in, so it was fully charged and ready to go.

A detour home to pick up Sunny from the childminder, who was only too keen to run off, grab some supplies, and then away. So far, so good.

This particular Volta was equipped with a roll cage and fitted out in military spec. It's body was all angles and hard edges, and the tires were aggressive and over-sized. It also had a hatch fitted in the roof above the passenger seat, and Kelly used this to get a higher vantage point to see what was happening ahead.

Though the binoculars, she could make out two pick-up trucks and several men blocking the highway, with perhaps another two or three trucks at the far end of the bridge with several more men guarding the far end. They didn't appear too heavily armed. She could see two men with shotguns, one with a sidearm. What the men on the other side had, she couldn't tell. Perhaps they were just thugs, fleecing the desperate trying to escape to who-knew-where. 

She looked at her watch. She should have been at Edwards already; had probably missed Able. It was hopeless. The road behind was blocked. The way ahead almost certainly closed to her. They would take the Volta and leave her and Sunny on the roadside. 

She ducked back inside and closed the hatch, then sat back behind the wheel. Her phone chimed. It was an alarm, set to remind her to call her mother before it turned midnight in Boston. There was no signal, so that was hopeless too.  Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes.

"Are we nearly there yet, mummy?" 

She turned to Sunny and smiled. "Not yet, honey. We've a little way to go yet."

"How far? I'm hungry."

"I don't know, darling. About..." Kelly turned to look at the Volta's sat-nav. The display showed just over thirty miles to go. The display, a large, 15 inch touch screen, was one of Able's military spec ones. It was chunky, made for soldiers wearing bulky kit in battle conditions, and very detailed. The map showed not only roads, but also terrain, a high quality satellite overlay showing the desert scrub extending either side of the highway. It also showed the bridge ahead, and the dry river bed it crossed. Would it still be dry, now, at the end of December? Possibly. 

She zoomed in, noting a track off to her right that led on into the river bed. Panning the map about, she found that the gully led under a railway and north, coming closer to the road once more a few miles away. 

"Strap in tight, honey. We're going on an adventure." 

Pulling her own seat's four-point harness on tight, Kelly engaged the Volta's off-road function and mashed the throttle to the floor, swinging the Volta right, across the road and into the desert. Turning on the spotlights, she found the track running parallel to the road and bounced down the dusty trail, stones bouncing off the wheel-arches and bodywork like shrapnel.

When she reached the river bed, she turned left, dodging the larger boulders and ruts in order to keep speed. A flashlight shone down from the bridge and she saw men pointing and shouting. Someone pointed a shotgun and she floored the accelerator once more. The Volta leapt away and passed under the bridge, just as the man fired. Pellets bounced off the metal and windscreen, but the hardened body shell and bullet-proof glass just shrugged them off, the noise hardly louder than the gravel thrown up by the tires. 

As she passed out from under the bridge, she found the ground dropped suddenly, with no time to stop or swerve away. The Volta dropped with a lurch, landing in deep water with an almighty splash. Water washed over the bonnet, and the car almost stopped completely with the impact. It was suddenly quiet, and she could here shouting from above. Panicking, the pushed the accelerator down once more. The Volta moved forward, but only just, the tires struggling for grip in the gravel as the lightly loaded back end floated up. There was a bang as something landed on the roof.

Suddenly, the hatch above her started to open and she grabbed it with both hands, shouting with the effort to hold it shut. The man on the roof slipped, a foot appearing in the windshield. Flooring the accelerator once more, she heard the motors whine and the tires scrabble once more. 

Just as her arms were starting to tremble with the effort of holding the hatch shut, the wheels found grip and the Volta leapt forward a few feet, knocking the man on the roof off balance. There was a thud as he fell over, and she took the opportunity to swing the steering from side to side to try and find more grip. It worked, and the Volta scrambled up, out of the water, the hood emerging like a submarine surfacing from the deep. As it picked up speed, the hatch above her suddenly opened. The face of a bearded man, grimacing with fury appeared, followed by an arm reaching in and grabbing her by the hair.

"Stop the car, you bitch! It belongs to me now!"

Screaming in pain, she began to feel for her handbag on the passenger seat next to her. It took a moment to find what she was looking for.

"You want something? Have this!" Swinging her right arm up, she pressed the twin prongs of a mini-taser into the flesh of the man's arm and pushed the button. His scream rent the air, and Kelly felt the faint shadow of the electric shock transmitted through her hair into her body. 

The hand let go and the arm withdrew, just as the wheels found grip. The Volta suddenly accelerated and shot forward once more, bouncing over large stones in the river bed. There was a series of bangs above and a flash of color in the rear-view mirror as the man rolled off the roof. Kelly kept the Volta charging along the river bed, the suspension banging and thumping and water splashing high over the roof and down through the open hatch.

After twenty minutes, she found the road again. Back on the tarmac, everything was suddenly calm and quiet and smooth. The took the Volta up to eighty, the tires humming and the motors singing.

By the time she approached Edwards, it was ten o'clock. Had Able waited? It was such a little hope, she knew. Nearing the base, she wondered how she would get in. Go to the main gate? Would it still be manned? She desperately needed to speak to Able, but every time she had tried his satellite phone number it just came back engaged. 

She stopped the Volta near the perimeter fence and got out, hoping to see signs of Able. And as she did, the sound of jet engines echoed in the night, the roar increasing until, with a flash of light and sound an aircraft flashed low overhead, retreating westwards into the night.