SNOW CRASH
He hands the tube to Y.T. The red numbers on top are counting down from ten.
‘When it gets down to one, hold it up to your nose and start inhaling,” the guy says.
She’s already backing away from him.
“You got a problem, little girl?” he says.
“Not yet,” she says. Then she throws the tube up in the air as hard as she can.
The chop of the rotor blades comes out of nowhere. The Whirlwind Reaper blurs over their heads; everyone crouches for an instant as surprise buckles their knees. The tube does not come back to earth.
“You fucking bitch,” the skinny guy says.
“That was a really cool plan,” the UKOD says, “but the part I can’t figure out is, why would a nice, smart girl like you participate in a suicide mission?”
The sun comes out. About half a dozen suns, actually, all around them up in the air, so that there are no shadows. The faces of the skinny man and the UKOD look flat and featureless under this blinding ifiumination. YT. is the only person who can see worth a damn because her Knight Visions have compensated for it; the men wince and sag beneath the light.
Y.T. turns to look behind herself. One of the miniature suns is hanging above the maze of shipping containers, casting light into all its crannies, blinding the gunmen who stand guard there. The scene flashes too light and too dark as her goggles’ electronics try to make up their mind. But in the midst of this whole visual tangle she gets one image printed indelibly on her retina: the gunmen going down like a treeline in a hurricane, and for just an instant, a line of dark angular things silhouetted above the maze as they crest it like a cybernetic tsunami. Rat Things.
They have evaded the whole maze by leaping over it in long, flat parabolas. Along the way, some of them have slammed right through the bodies of men holding guns, like NFL fijilbacks plowing full speed through nerdy sideline photographers. Then, as they land on the road in front of the maze, there is an instant burst of dust with frantic white sparks dancing around at the bottom, and while all this is happening, Y.T. doesn’t hear, she feels one of the Rat Things impacting on the body of the tall