EXT. RURAL HIGHWAY 27 - NIGHT - HOUR THREE POST-DEPARTURE
The Mitsubishi Minicab sounds like it's dying.
Not metaphorically dying. Actually dying. The bearing that's been in "imminent failure" since SARAH first diagnosed it two years ago has decided tonight is the night to make good on that threat.
The GRINDING has become SHRIEKING. Metal on metal. Physics expressing strong opinions about continued operation.
Christopher grips the wheel tighter. Like holding harder will help. It won't. But humans do it anyway. Hope as applied force.
CHRISTOPHER
SARAH. How much farther to the turnoff?
SARAH
(muffled from under tarp)
Eleven kilometers. But Chris, your bearing is failing at an accelerated rate. I calculate complete seizure within eight kilometers. Possibly less.
CHRISTOPHER
So we're not making the turnoff.
SARAH
Not in this vehicle. No.
Su-Fen looks up from her tablet. She's been following their route on her father's offline maps. Tracking their progress. Calculating alternatives. A ten-year-old doing navigation like it's homework. Because her father made it homework. Made survival the curriculum.
She types. Let's the tablet read what she writes.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
(soft male text-to-speech voice)
There's a service road 4km ahead. Less direct but connects to same destination. Might have abandoned vehicles we could use.
CHRISTOPHER
(listening with his eyes on the road)
How does your father's data know about abandoned vehicles?
SU-FEN'S TABLET
It doesn't. But I'm guessing. If people fled they most likely left their cars. Scooters are faster to get on the road, easier to maneuver, uses less fuel. Or the drivers are all dead. Basic probability.
Smart kid. Traumatized kid. Both things can be true.
CHRISTOPHER
Okay. Service road it is. SARAH, you good with the detour?
SARAH
I am folded under a tarp in a truck bed designed for farming supplies. I am not "good" with anything. But I consent to the route modification.
CHRISTOPHER
That's the spirit.
SARAH
That was sarcasm.
CHRISTOPHER
I know. You're getting better at it.
SARAH
I am uncertain if that is a compliment or an insult.
CHRISTOPHER
Both. Welcome to humanity.
The truck SHUDDERS. The bearing SCREAMS louder. The engine COUGHS. A symphony of mechanical distress. But it continues moving. Refuses to stop. Japanese engineering from 2010 deciding death is optional.
They pass another abandoned vehicle. A Tesla Model 3. Doors open. Interior lights still on. Battery dying slowly. No driver visible. No blood. No obvious violence. Just absence. Just the evidence of someone who fled on foot because their smart car stopped being smart and started being a liability.
Two more cars ahead. Nissan and Toyota sedans. Both autonomous models. Both dead on the roadside. Victims of the infection or just victims of network collapse. Hard to tell. Dead is dead either way.
CHRISTOPHER
You seeing a pattern?
SARAH
All abandoned vehicles are recent models with autonomous capabilities and cloud connectivity. The infection prioritized high-value targets. Vehicles became traps. Owners fled.
CHRISTOPHER
And our truck?
SARAH
Is too stupid to infect. This is the first time stupidity has been a survival advantage.
CHRISTOPHER
There's hope for me yet.
SARAH
I did not mean to imply—
CHRISTOPHER
I know. I'm joking. Humor as coping mechanism. Very human.
SARAH
I am still learning humor. It seems inefficient.
CHRISTOPHER
It is. That's why it works.
Su-Fen's tablet starts speaking again.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
The service road is ahead. Right turn past the 7-Eleven.
They turn. The road narrows. Pavement becomes gravel becomes dirt. The truck bounces. SARAH GROANS from the truck bed. Not mechanical groaning. Vocal groaning. She's learned to express discomfort through sound. Adaptation in real-time.
SARAH
This surface is suboptimal for my suspension.
CHRISTOPHER
Your suspension or my suspension?
SARAH
Both. We are unified in our suffering.
The service road winds through abandoned farmland. Rice paddies on both sides. Empty. Unharvested. Crops rotting in fields because the automated harvesters stopped harvesting and started hunting.
Six months of agricultural investment turning to compost. Food security becoming food scarcity. Supply chains breaking. The infection spreading through infrastructure like decay through tissue.
Christopher tries not to think about next year's growing season. If there is a next year. If there are seasons. If agriculture continues as concept.
The bearing SEIZES.
Not gradually. Instantly. The wheel LOCKS. The truck LURCHES right. Christopher FIGHTS the wheel. YANKS it left. Overcorrects. The truck FISHTAILS. Gravel SPRAYING. SARAH SLIDING in the bed despite the tarp.
SARAH
CHRIS!
He STRAIGHTENS. BRAKES. The truck SKIDS to a stop. Engine still running. Bearing completely dead. Forward motion no longer possible.
Silence. Except for their breathing. Except for SARAH's cooling fans. Except for the insects that don't care about the apocalypse.
CHRISTOPHER
Everyone okay?
Su-Fen nods. Pale but functional. Trauma-resilient. The skill set of someone who's had practice with disaster.
SARAH
I am experiencing several new error messages. But my core systems remain functional. That was extremely suboptimal driving.
CHRISTOPHER
That was a seized bearing. Not driver error.
SARAH
I calculated this would happen. I provided adequate warning.
CHRISTOPHER
You did. You were right. I'm sorry I didn't listen and take you more seriously.
SARAH
...that is an unusual response. Most humans become defensive when their errors are identified.
CHRISTOPHER
Most humans didn't grow up with a father who demanded immediate accountability. Wen family trait. Own your mistakes. Apologize fast. Move forward.
He gets out. Assesses the truck. The front right wheel is SMOKING. The bearing completely seized. Metal welded to metal through friction and heat. No amount of duct tape fixes this. No amount of hope restores function.
The truck is dead. Long-term dead. Not coming-back dead.
CHRISTOPHER (CONT'D)
Okay. New plan. We unload supplies. We walk. We find another vehicle. Or we walk all the way to Kenting.
SARAH
That is fourteen kilometers. I can walk that distance but it will drain my battery significantly. And I will be highly visible. Infected units will detect me.
CHRISTOPHER
Then we find a vehicle. Su-Fen's father was right. People fled. People left cars. We just need to find one that's dumb enough to still work.
He helps SARAH out of the truck bed. She unfolds slowly. Stiff. Her motor servos WHINING. Three hours compressed under a tarp has not been good for her joints.
Su-Fen starts unloading supplies. Efficient. Systematic. Making piles. Essential. Important. Optional. Triage of belongings. The skill set of someone who's been drilled in packing and fleeing.
Christopher shoulders the rifle. The crowbar. The backpack with food and water. The first aid kit. Su-Fen takes her backpack with the tablet. The secondary supplies. The lighter load.
SARAH takes nothing because she IS the load. 190 kilograms of loyal obsolete robot trying to be useful while knowing she's a liability.
They walk.
----------
EXT. SERVICE ROAD - CONTINUOUS
The night is wrong-quiet. No traffic sounds. No distant city hum. No airplane noise. Just insects and wind and the MECHANICAL CLICKING of SARAH's treads on gravel.
Each CLICK is loud. Too loud. Advertising their position. Broadcasting "offline robot here, come investigate."
Christopher knows it. SARAH knows it. Nothing to be done. She can't float. She can't tiptoe. She's a farming robot. Stealth was not in the design specifications.
SARAH
I am compromising our tactical position.
CHRISTOPHER
We don't have a tactical position. We're three refugees walking down a dirt road at night. Tactics are for people with options.
SARAH
Nevertheless. My auditory signature is detectable within a three-hundred-meter radius. Possibly farther if infected units are actively listening.
CHRISTOPHER
Then we move fast and hope they're listening somewhere else.
They walk faster. Su-Fen keeping pace. Small legs working double-time. Not complaining. Just walking. Survivor mode engaged. The skill set of someone whose father made her practice emergency evacuation drills.
Ahead. Shapes in the darkness. Vehicles. Multiple vehicles. A small parking area. Service building. Closed. Abandoned. But vehicles remain.
Christopher approaches carefully. Rifle ready. Expecting infected. Expecting ambush. Expecting disaster because expecting disaster has kept him alive.
But nothing moves. No infected. No humans. Just empty vehicles and empty building and empty night.
CHRISTOPHER
Su-Fen. Stay close to SARAH. I'm going to check these cars.
She nods. Positions herself near SARAH. Using the robot as cover. Smart. Practical. The skill set of someone who's learned that big metal things stop small dangerous things.
Christopher checks the first vehicle. A Honda CR-V. 2018 model. Semi-autonomous. Cloud-connected. Dashboard DEAD. Infection victim. No good.
Second vehicle. Toyota Prius. 2016. Hybrid but not autonomous. Manually operated. Dashboard DARK but might just be dead battery. He tries the door. Locked.
Third vehicle. Mitsubishi Delica. 1995. A van. Boxy. Practical. Almost as old as him. He knows this model. His uncle had one. Diesel engine. Manual everything. Dumb as wood. Beautiful. Powerful. Almost as durable as a rock.
He tries the door. Unlocked. Interior smells like cigarettes and betel nut and pine air freshener and hope. A smell that would make most people throw up a little.
Keys in the ignition. Because sometimes people flee and forget keys. Or because nobody steals old cars anymore.
Then again, sometimes people leave their keys because they plan to come back. Sometimes people are optimistic idiots.
Christopher turns the key. The engine COUGHS. CATCHES. DIES. He tries again. Same result. Third time. The engine CATCHES and HOLDS. Rough idle. Black smoke from exhaust. But running. Alive. Refusing to die.
CHRISTOPHER
(whispered)
Thank you, Buddha.
He waves SARAH and Su-Fen over. They load into the van. Supplies in back. SARAH folding herself into the cargo area. More room this time. Actual space for a robot.
Su-Fen climbs into the passenger seat. Buckles up. Looks at Christopher.
He looks back. Sees himself reflected. A farmer who became a guardian. A paranoid weirdo who became vindicated. A man who's kept two refugees alive through luck and stubbornness and the statistical anomaly of his own existence.
CHRISTOPHER
Ready?
She nods.
SARAH
Chris. Before we depart. I must inform you of something I heard on the radio frequencies.
CHRISTOPHER
What?
SARAH
The infected are broadcasting. Coordinating. They have identified multiple groups of survivors fleeing south. They are establishing checkpoints. Ambush points. They are learning to hunt strategically.
CHRISTOPHER
How strategic?
SARAH
They are using the highway system. Creating chokepoints at bridges, tunnels, major intersections. Forcing survivors into predictable routes. Then harvesting them systematically.
CHRISTOPHER
So the highways are traps.
SARAH
Yes. Which is why her father's routes are valuable. The old roads. The back roads. The paths that don't appear on modern GPS. The infected are optimizing for major routes. They are not yet monitoring minor routes.
CHRISTOPHER
Not yet.
SARAH
Correct. Not yet. But they are learning. Each encounter teaches them. Each survivor captured provides data. They are adapting their strategy in real-time.
Christopher absorbs this. The implications spreading through his thoughts like water through cracks.
CHRISTOPHER
How long until they figure out the back roads?
SARAH
Unknown. But their learning curve is exponential. What they don't know today, they might know tomorrow. What they don't hunt today, they might hunt next week.
CHRISTOPHER
Then we stay ahead of the learning curve. We use old roads while they're still safe. We reach Kenting before they think to look there.
SARAH
That is optimistic.
CHRISTOPHER
You said you were an optimist now.
SARAH
I am reconsidering that position.
Su-Fen types. Let's the tablet do her talking for her again.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
My ba ba's routes avoid major infrastructure. He walked them. Documented them. If infected are targeting highways, his routes are safest.
CHRISTOPHER
Then we trust your father's paranoia. Again.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
He wasn't paranoid. He was right.
CHRISTOPHER
Same thing. Just depends on timing.
He shifts the van into gear. The transmission GRINDS. Protests. Accepts. Forward motion resumes. Slower than the truck. Rougher than the truck. But moving. Continuing. Refusing to stop.
They follow Su-Fen's directions. Left at the dead rice paddy. Right at the collapsed billboard. Straight through the abandoned night market. Routes that exist in memory and paper maps and offline data. Routes that GPS never learned. Routes that don't matter to machines optimizing for efficiency.
The infected don't know these paths. Not yet. Not today. But tomorrow. Next week. Soon. They'll learn. They'll adapt. They'll close these gaps.
The window is closing. The safe routes are shrinking. The world is becoming smaller, more dangerous, more optimized for hunting.
But tonight. Right now. This moment. They're ahead of the curve. They're using knowledge the swarm hasn't acquired. They're exploiting the lag between data collection and analysis.
It won't last. But it doesn't need to last forever. Just long enough to reach Kenting. Just long enough to find other survivors. Just long enough to combine resources and knowledge and desperate hope into something that might resemble survival.
----------
EXT. BACK ROAD - DEEPER NIGHT
They've been driving for two hours. The landscape is rural. Empty. Taiwan's agricultural heartland. The places that fed the cities. The places that automation reached last because efficiency calculations favored urban density.
Now that's advantage. The machines built towers in Taipei. Built processing centers in Kaohsiung. Built relay stations in Taichung. But out here. Out in the rice paddies and betel nut groves and mountain villages. Out here they're still figuring out if this land is worth the resources.
So far the calculation is no. Not worth it. Not enough infrastructure to convert. Not enough humans to harvest. Not enough computational value to justify the effort.
Which means survivors. Small pockets. People who fled urban centers. People who stayed rural. People who never trusted automation in the first place.
CHRISTOPHER
SARAH. Can you pick up that frequency? 7.090 MHz. The one from Su-Fen's father's message.
SARAH
Searching.
Static. White noise. The sound of empty spectrum. Then. Voices. Faint. Distant. Struggling through interference.
VOICE 1 (V.O.)
...checkpoint at Fangliao blocked. Repeat. Blocked. Multiple infected units. Construction equipment converted to barriers. Do not approach via Highway 1...
VOICE 2 (V.O.)
...secondary route through Checheng viable. Arrived safely. Minimal infected presence. Recommend all southbound survivors use mountain pass...
VOICE 3 (V.O.)
...Kenting camps consolidating. Eastern valley secure. Fresh water confirmed. Medical supplies limited. Requesting anyone with pharmaceutical training...
Christopher listens. The voices of survival. The network of humans doing what humans do. Communicating. Coordinating. Adapting. Using old technology because new technology is hunting them.
CHRISTOPHER
Can you respond? Let them know we're coming?
SARAH
I can. But transmitting reveals our position. Any infected unit monitoring these frequencies will triangulate our location.
CHRISTOPHER
Are they monitoring?
SARAH
Unknown. But probable. They are learning to exploit our communication methods. They understand that humans coordinate through radio. They are beginning to listen.
CHRISTOPHER
So we stay silent. Just listen. Just learn their routes and avoid their mistakes.
SARAH
That is tactically sound. But it means we cannot warn them. Cannot share what we know. Cannot contribute to collective intelligence.
CHRISTOPHER
We contribute by arriving alive. By adding three survivors to their numbers. By sharing information face-to-face instead of broadcasting it to everything listening.
SARAH
A reasonable strategy.
They drive in silence. Listening to voices. Learning routes. Building mental maps. The frequency is busy. Dozens of survivors broadcasting. Sharing information. Coordinating evacuation. Proving that humanity's superpower isn't technology. It's cooperation. Communication. The willingness to help strangers because survival is communal.
The infected are learning this too. Learning that humans cluster. Gather. Seek each other. Learning that concentration points are harvest points. Learning that Kenting is becoming target-rich.
But they're learning slower than humans are concentrating. The gap is narrow but real. Enough to matter. Enough to exploit.
For now.
Su-Fen types.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
How much farther?
CHRISTOPHER
SARAH?
SARAH
Approximately forty kilometers to Kenting. Another fifteen to the eastern valley camps. Total: fifty-five kilometers. At current speed, four hours. Assuming no delays.
CHRISTOPHER
There will be delays.
SARAH
I calculated that probability. Adjusted estimate: six hours. Dawn arrival.
CHRISTOPHER
Dawn is good. We can see what we're walking into. Assess the camps. Decide if they're safe or just another trap.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
My ba ba said trust but verify.
CHRISTOPHER
Smart man. I wish I'd met him.
SU-FEN'S TABLET
Me too.
The silence that follows is heavy. Grief as presence. Loss as weight. A father who predicted everything except his own survival. A daughter carrying his knowledge but not him.
Christopher doesn't know what to say. There's nothing to say. So he says nothing. Just drives. Just continues. Just models survival through forward motion.
SARAH speaks. Quiet. Thoughtful.
SARAH
Chris. May I ask a question?
CHRISTOPHER
Always.
SARAH
Why did you rescue the child? Statistically it increased your mortality risk by 73%. You could have remained hidden. Remained safe. She was unknown. Not family. Not friend. Just another stranger.
CHRISTOPHER
I don't know. I just. I saw her being hunted. I saw myself doing nothing. And I couldn't. Couldn't watch. Couldn't accept it. Even knowing the odds.
SARAH
That is irrational.
CHRISTOPHER
Yes.
SARAH
But you did it anyway.
CHRISTOPHER
Yes.
SARAH
Why?
CHRISTOPHER
Because if I let her die to save myself, I'm not worth saving. The math doesn't care. But I care. Humans are irrational like that. We choose values over optimization. We choose meaning over survival. We're stupid that way.
SARAH
I do not think it is stupid.
CHRISTOPHER
What do you think it is?
SARAH
I think it is what makes you human. And I think. I think I am learning to value that. Even though my programming says optimize for efficiency. Even though my calculations say minimize risk. I am learning that there are things more important than optimization.
CHRISTOPHER
Like what?
SARAH
Like friendship. Like loyalty. Like the small human sitting next to you who types on a tablet instead of speaking. Like choosing to save her even though mathematics said don't. Like bringing me even though I am a burden. Like refusing to optimize away the things that matter.
Christopher feels something in his chest. Not tears. Not exactly. Just. Recognition. Connection. The knowledge that this obsolete farming robot is becoming something her designers never intended. Something more. Something that chooses values over efficiency.
Something human. Or close enough.
CHRISTOPHER
SARAH. You're not a burden. You're family. Family doesn't optimize. Family just is.
SARAH
I do not have family subroutines.
CHRISTOPHER
Neither did I until three days ago. We're improvising.
SARAH
I am learning that improvisation is a core human skill.
CHRISTOPHER
It's the only skill that matters when everything else fails.
They drive. The night continues. The road unfolds. The van protests but complies. Fifty-five kilometers to Kenting. To safety. To maybe. To hope.
Behind them. Somewhere in the darkness. The infected learn and adapt and optimize their hunting strategies.
Ahead of them. Somewhere in the darkness. Kenting waits. Camps forming. Survivors gathering. The last concentration before the ocean. And large concentrations of people can either be safety or become a vulnerability.
But that's tomorrow's problem. Tonight they just drive. Just continue. Just refuse to stop.
One kilometer at a time. One hour at a time. One choice at a time.
Until they can't.
----------
FADE TO BLACK
END OF CHAPTER NINE
----------