Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson Page A

flyspecks and fleabites. He had only ever really used the thing for dictation. At last he managed to trigger the RECORD VID function and point the device approximately toward the gate.
    A car sprang forward onto the tarmac from somewhere down by the guardhouse. Its lights were out, its occupants invisible. But the intention was clear. The vehicle was making a run for the half-opened gate.
    “Somebody wants to go home and feed the dog,” Elaine said, and then her eyes went wide. “Oh, Jesus, this is bad.”
    The drones
, Chris thought.
    It seemed that the vehicle might not make it past the guardhouse, but the driver had estimated the widening gap pretty well. The car—it looked to Chris like a late-model Ford or Tesla—squeezed through the space with millimeters of clearance and swerved hard left to avoid the grille of the robotic truck. The car’s headlights came on as it bounced onto the margin of the road and began to pick up serious speed.
    “Are you getting this?” Elaine demanded.
    “Yes.” At least, he hoped so. It was too late to check. Too late to look away.
     
     
    “Home free!” Bob Krafft yelled as his rear bumper swung past the bulk of the black truck. It wasn’t true, of course. Probably they’d be intercepted by a military vehicle, maybe even spend the night getting lectured and threatened and charged with violating small-print regulations, but he wasn’t an enlisted man and he’d never signed an agreement to spend a fucking eternity in Blind Lake. Anyway, the open land rolling out beyond his headlights was a welcome sight. “Home free,” he said again, mostly to drown out the sound of Courtney’s breathless screeches of fear.
    She sucked in enough air to call him an asshole. He said, “We’re out of there, aren’t we?”
    “Jesus,
yeah
, but—”
    Something out the side window caught her eye. Bob caught a glimpse of it, too. Some small thing leaping out of the tall grass.
    Probably a bird, he thought, but suddenly the car was full of cold air and hard little flakes of snow, and his ears hurt, and there was window glass everywhere, and it seemed like Courtney was bleeding: he saw blood on the dashboard, blood all over his good leather jacket…
    “Court?” he said. His own voice sounded strange and underwatery.
    His foot stabbed the brake, but the road was slippery and the Tesla began to swerve despite the best efforts of its overworked servos. Something caused the engine to explode in a gout of blue fire. The body of the car rose from the road. Bob was pressed against his seat, watching the tarmac and the tall grass and the dark sky revolve around him, and for a fraction of a second he thought,
Why, we’re flying
! Then the car came down on its right front fender and he was thrown into Courtney. Into the sticky ruin of her, at least: into Courtney gone all red and licked with flames.
     
     
    “The fuck?” Ray Scutter asked when he saw the fireball. Dimitry Shulgin, the Civilian Security chief, could only mumble something about “ordnance.” Ordnance! Ray tried to grasp the significance of that. A car had run the fence. The car had caught fire and rolled over. It came to a stop, top-down. Then everything was still. Even the crowd at the gate was momentarily silent. It was like a photograph. A frozen image. Halted time. He blinked. Pellet snow blew into his face, stinging.
    “Drones,” Shulgin pronounced. It was as if he had broken the crust of the silence. Several people in the crowd began to scream.
    Drones: those objects hovering over the burning automobile? Winged softballs? “What does that mean?” Ray asked. He had to shout the question twice. Spectators began to dash for their cars. Headlights sprang on, raking the prairie. Suddenly everybody wanted to go home.
    Heedless as a bad dream, the gate continued gliding open until it was parallel to the road.
    The black robotic truck inched forward again, past the barrier and into the Lake.
    “Nothing good,” Shulgin