End Program

by James Axler

  “You okay?” Ryan asked as Krysty and Mildred hurried over.

  The dark-haired youth nodded and tried to speak, but he was caught in a spasm of coughing, and bent over as he tried to catch his breath. “Yeah,” he finally gasped, his voice strained. “Got...trapped...inside.”

  “Is this your mother?” Ryan asked, indicating the woman with the child.

  The teen shook his head. “Aunt,” he said.

  “Mildred, get a safe distance and check these people over,” Ryan instructed.

  “Will do,” Mildred said, immediately leading the group away from the burning farmhouse, out into the charred circle of dirt that remained between flaming fields and burning building. She watched the area around as she went, scanning for more coldhearts.

  Ryan looked around him at the fallen bikers, gazed up at the house that was now a black shell burning like a lighter.

  “Jak’s still in there,” Ricky said, joining Ryan.

  As they looked at the house, a great chunk of its wooden facade creaked and crashed to the ground. Ryan pulled Ricky and Krysty aside as smoke and a shower of sparks billowed outward.

  “He won’t last long in there,” Ryan stated.

  “Jak might not be able to get out either,” Ricky said grimly.

  “I’ll go,” Krysty told them, and before Ryan could argue she had slipped past the burning debris in the doorway and disappeared into the inferno.

  “Ryan,” Mildred said ominously as he watched Krysty disappear. “I think we have another problem.”

  Ryan turned at the warning, looking where Mildred was staring from her spot twenty feet away in the shadow of the farmhouse. There, amid the burning remains of a motorcycle, one of the bike gang was getting back onto his feet. His flesh was alight, stringy trails of skin and muscle tapering away in streaks of black smoke. Framed in a halo of fire, the biker’s face grinned maniacally—a face more metal than flesh.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The silence inside the barn was eerie. It seemed unnatural somehow, with all that mechanical equipment laid out across the vast space. It wasn’t stored here or “parked” here—J.B. could see that much, just by looking at it—at least not most of it. One item had caterpillar tracks at its base, with a kind of turret resting on a swivel point above them, able to rotate through 360 degrees. But the rest looked fixed, mounted along the walls, locked in place by rivets and counterweights to ensure it didn’t overbalance.

  A maze of metal struts seemed to dominate the barn, weaving through the air above their heads like the tentacles of an octopus. Each strut ran eight feet in length and was jointed at its midpoint, creating a kind of hinged arm effect. The ends of each strut featured a different tool, and J.B. and Doc recognized buzz saws, drills and threshing equipment among those utensils. Below those robot arms ran a conveyor belt, fixed in as a part of the machinery itself, molded into the base unit from which the metal arms sprouted. There were storage bins placed beside and at the ends of the belts, and more to the sides of the room. Some had lids, while others remained open to the air.

  While the equipment took up a lot of the wall space, the arms themselves ran high over the barn, sitting at rest where the second story of the barn would be. This arrangement left plenty of space within which Doc and J.B. could walk, and they strode warily into that space, trying to take everything in.

  “What have we found?” Doc asked, bewildered. “Some kind of manufactory?”

  “Yeah, but not for blasters,” J.B. said, drawing on his own frame of reference. “This is all farming equipment, designed to sift crops, chop and process.” As he spoke, he reached into one of the open bins—running his open fingers through the dusty grain that resided within.

  Doc looked at the octopus arms with new understanding. “Robots to sort the wheat from the chaff. Incredible,” he said.

  “Tech like this takes time to install,” J.B. said, hurrying through the poised robot arms toward a set of wooden slatlike stairs that climbed up into the abbreviated second story. The upper level covered only one-third of the barn, like a wide shelf sitting against the rear wall of the structure. J.B. could see a small window there, a good vantage point to look out across the farm grounds.

  J.B. ran up the steps, the Uzi clutched in his right fist. He sprinted across to the window—it had no glass—and peered through. He could see the road leading up to the farmhouse, wisps of smoke galloping across it now like a stampede. The farmhouse itself was located off to the far left, which meant that J.B. could see the edge of it if he strained. Columns of flames ran up its walls, and a thick plume of dark smoke billowed above. J.B. leaned on the window frame, resting his blaster there as he studied the road. Narrowing his eyes, he watched the trails of dust spiraling up in the distance—someone was coming down the dirt road; a long way off but getting closer.

  “Doc,” J.B. called, “we’re going have company. Mebbe bad company.”

  “Such are our odds,” Doc muttered from the level below J.B., checking his LeMat with habitual thoroughness. Once he had, Doc eyed the machinery around him warily. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. And yet, there was something unsettling about this place, something almost alive.

  * * *

  DROPPING THE STEYR, Ryan whipped out his SIG Sauer blaster in a single, fluid motion as he ran across the dirt toward the rising man-machine. The blaster barked one shot, two, three, sending a trio of 9 mm Parabellum bullets at the figure amid the flames.

  The first shot struck the burning biker in the chest, drilling into his body with a screech of metal scraping against metal. The second and third shots followed, one striking higher in the man’s chest, close to his breastbone.

  The biker staggered back at the blows, his long beard whipping out to his side like a burning scarf.

  Ryan had his distance now, and he approached more slowly, his left hand adopting a steadying grip below his right wrist, holding the SIG Sauer P226 level with the biker’s flaming head.

  The biker smiled, grinning amid the ruined flesh where the fire had singed it away, exposing a metal frame of pulleys and joints beneath. “Gonna enjoy chillin’ you,” the biker snarled. His voice sounded doubled and wheezy, as if he was speaking through a harmonica.

  Ryan stood ready, waiting for the man to take another step. Behind him, Ricky brought his own weapon to bear, thrusting the Webley toward the standing figure.

  * * *

  KRYSTY RAN WITHOUT conscious thought, racing up the burning stairs to the second story of the farmhouse, calling Jak’s name over and over. The walls had been stripped back by the fire now, and several stairs had broken through, leaving nothing but their boxlike frames, charred black where they sat exposed.

  Jak didn’t respond, so Krysty kept climbing, running through the thick curtain of smoke, past another burning door, another burning wall. What furniture had lined the hallways was trashed now, chair backs burned away, an occasional table black with smoke and playing host to the remains of a vase of flowers that had shattered with the heat. It was crippling hot, so stifling that Krysty had to breathe through her clenched teeth. But finding Jak was paramount.

  Jak would be on the top floor, she sensed—he would have searched each floor in turn, checked for survivors and kept moving up higher into the building, away from its burning first floor. Not that that would save him—heat rose, fire moved upward and so did smoke. Trying to outclimb a fire was like trying to outrun a bullet—it simply couldn’t be done.

  “Jak?” Krysty called again. She had reached the loft ladder now, pulled herself up it in a great sweep of her long legs. “Are you up here?”

  Jak’s voice came back, but it was weak and breathless. “Krysty? That you?”

  Krysty’s head was above the sill of the gap now, peering into the roof space where the ladder led. Like the rest of the house, it was thick with smoke, a dark
, oppressive grayness that swirled around like fog. The roof was low here, creating a slanted ceiling that ran in a point down the middle, just high enough to let a grown man stand. Jak was huddling with a group of survivors—some of them wrapped in blankets that they had drawn over their heads to try to filter the smoke.

  “Quickly,” Krysty told them. “We need to—” She felt something give below her, and suddenly the ladder was toppling away from the trapdoor that led into the roof, its lowest struts licked by rising flames. Automatically, Krysty reached out and grabbed the edges of the hole above her, clinging there as the burning ladder fell away.

  With a supreme effort, Krysty pulled herself up and scrambled into the loft area. It was fiercely hot there, like standing in an oven.

  A child looked up from among the gaggle of survivors. She was a girl of no more than five, with blond hair tied up in twin pigtails to either side of her head. “Are you an angel?” she asked, tears streaming down her face where the smoke was irritating her eyes.

  Krysty shook her head. “We need to get out of here, right now.”

  “How?” a man asked. He had short-cropped hair and a ginger beard trimmed in a goatee style. “There’s no way to—”

  “Always a way,” Krysty told him firmly. “Just got to find it—or make it.”

  “What do?” he asked, pulling the top of his shirt away to speak.

  Krysty scanned the loft space, searching for a way out. She would have to come up with a plan quickly.

  * * *

  J.B. SAW THE motorcycles rushing down the road toward the farm from his vantage point at the barn window. There had to be thirty in total, alerted by the smoke and coming to scavenge what they could from the disaster. To scavenge and to chill.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryan’s shots were having no effect. The biker kept coming, striding through the fire, his body aflame, metal glistening through the gaps in his burned flesh.

  Beside Ryan, Ricky was reloading his Webley and taking aim once more, but Ryan ushered the lad back.

  “Keep your distance,” he advised. Ryan had faced machines and implausibly strong creatures before now, and one thing he knew was when they approached the best thing to do—sometimes the only thing to do—was to stay out of their reach.

  The biker laughed—a terrible metallic sound like clashing gears—as he stepped out of the shell of the burning motorcycle and into the shadow of the flaming farmhouse.

  Ryan heard the report of Mildred’s ZKR target pistol, and he looked back automatically, a swift glance, taking in everything he could in a blink. His artificial eye held the image, displaying it directly down his optic nerve like a photograph sent to his brain. The other bikers were rising too, wounded and some of them burned like the leader. They stood unsteadily like mannequins on a stage, as if relearning how to walk after some terrible trauma. Mildred’s blast had targeted the first to rise, but already the others were on their feet, and it was clear that Mildred’s shot had had little effect.

  “Ryan, I don’t like this,” Mildred said unnecessarily.

  * * *

  J.B. WATCHED THE thirty-strong bike gang approach. It was a veritable army, one neither he nor his companions were prepared to fight. He might be able to pick off a few from up here, mebbe more if he had a scoped longblaster like the one Ryan carried, but it would be a stalling tactic, nothing more.

  “Doc,” J.B. called down to his partner, “we’re going to have to make a barricade, hold these coldhearts back long enough so we can beat feet.”

  “How many are there?” Doc asked. He stood close to the double doors of the barn, one of them propped open just enough that he, too, could spy the road—albeit only a tiny strip of it.

  “I count thirty,” J.B. said, “give or take. More than we can handle.”

  “How long would you say before they get here?”

  “Long road,” J.B. said. “Speed they’re traveling, I’m guess mebbe three minutes.”

  “That doesn’t leave us much time to construct your barricade, John Barrymore,” Doc observed.

  “You know what they say about creating,” J.B. replied as he came hurrying back down the ladder, “first you got to clear your work surface.” As he spoke, the bespectacled Armorer was reaching into his satchel and rooting around for the right tools for the task.

  Doc recognized the look on J.B.’s face. It was the blissful look he wore whenever there was serious ordnance required. “It certainly does a man good to enjoy his work,” Doc muttered as he hurried across the barn to assist J.B..

  * * *

  THE FARMHOUSE LOFT was sealed tighter than a drum. Krysty searched the edges and corners, but other than a few mouse holes and a couple of tiny gaps where the roof beams joined, there was no space to escape.

  “Jak, I’m going to try something,” Krysty said. She didn’t say what. “Hold everyone back.”

  Jak just nodded, trusting the woman and backing her plan without question. He stretched his arms out wide, guiding the farmhouse survivors to remain behind him like a man ushering the queue at a carnival attraction.

  Krysty began to chant a prayer to the Earth Mother, asking for strength in this hour of her need. As she whispered, she stepped across to the highest part of the room, where the two eaves of the roof met, and pressed her hands against the supporting strut. Then, with a grimace of effort, she pushed against the strut, leaning into it and shoving as hard as she could.

  They all heard a creak like the opening of an old door in need of oiling, and then, without warning, the support beam bent outward, snapping along its midpoint and crashing through the exterior wall of the loft.

  Around that support beam, the joining planks that held it in place snapped, the floorboards began to creak and break apart, and nails that had held the thing in place for years fell from the wood as it disintegrated.

  Jak watched as Krysty shoved the support beam clear through the front of the house, flickers of flame dancing in the gap revealed beyond.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, RYAN, RICKY and Mildred had congregated back-to-back-to-back, covering one another as the still-burning bikers surrounded them like jackals surrounding a wounded lion.

  Everyone looked up at the sudden noise from the house, saw the thick support beam come bursting through the front of the building, bringing with it a great chunk of the roof and frame. The tangle of beams was burning when it fell, plummeting through the air like a comet.

  Ryan shoved Ricky and Mildred back as what seemed like half the burning farmhouse crashed to the ground, slamming into the unsuspecting bikers, slapping them to the ground like the wrath of some terrible god.

  The result saw a great cloud of dust and smoke kicked up, lances of fire whipping off in all directions like rockets. Ryan held his arm up to protect his face as the fireball kicked out in the aftermath of the roof collapse.

  Four of the six bikers had sunk beneath the fallen roof, while another was caught by a flying chunk of debris that speared him straight through the chest. He sagged to the ground, cursing in a strained howl like a wounded dog, a spike of burning wood wedged through his back and emerging between his ribs. In a moment, he went up in flames, flesh parting into holes like burning tissue paper.

  The female passenger whom Ricky had observed taking such delight in setting light to the crops remained clear of the falling material but could not avoid the shower of sparks that erupted from it once it slammed against the ground. Ricky, Ryan and Mildred watched as the woman went up in flames, her clothes and hair turned into a flickering curtain of red-and-orange fire.

  Then a figure emerged from the gap in the building roof, her hair also like flame as she stepped out into nothingness. It was Krysty, walking out into the open air as if it could support her weight, falling in a windmill of whirring arms and legs. She landed with a “woof” o
f expelled air, rolled and turned to catch the next person who dropped.

  Three more came out from the building eaves in quick succession, leaping out into the void, kicking out as far as they could to land clear of the flames that engulfed the scene. They looked beautiful in their way, like divers on the high board. The figures emerged one after the other, clinging to bundles of rags that held possessions and babies inside, screaming as they dropped to the ground.

  The first landed with a yelp of pain, a snap of bone, but rolled clear to give the next room to land. Krysty caught the next, guiding the young woman to a sort of running landing, trotting across the bare ground as she tried to lose the momentum from her fall. The third fell against Krysty, and hit hard, knocking them both to the ground. But Krysty was okay, she cushioned the fall of the survivors, worried naught for her own safety. Ryan watched with concern, ran across to help, even as the next figure leaped from the burning building. Things were moving so fast, gravity ever relentless.

  The adults were followed by two kids, maybe eight-or ten-years-old, holding hands as they dropped to the relative safety of the ground where the adults caught them. As Krysty recovered, Ryan stepped in and caught the next figure, a girl with blond pigtails, her face blackened with soot.

  Jak came last, leaping with all the agility of a jungle cat and landing in a crouch, his muscles moving him smoothly to discharge the force with which he struck the ground, a baby in his arms.

  Across the way, the last of the bikers was struggling free from the burning hunk of roof he had become entangled with. Mildred and Ricky watched, ready with their blasters to mow the man down if he tried anything. He finally recovered just as Jak landed, doing a kind of strange two-step to extricate himself from the flaming debris and round on whatever target was closest.