Wasteland Marshals

by Gail Z. Martin

  “So who made it to Raven Rock, do you think?” Lucas asked. “Because we know the President and Vice President died in the blast, and so did most of Congress.”

  “Officials who were lucky enough not to be in their offices,” Shane replied. “Second-tier bureaucrats. The Pentagon was inside the dead zone, but maybe their ‘junior varsity’ command team went below. But who stayed for three years, once it was clear that Washington was permanently down? No idea.”

  The coastal cities had borne the brunt of the Events, as the weather grew more severe. Snowstorms and extreme flooding paralyzed transportation and took down portions of the power grid, while freakishly strong winds reduced huge sections of the cities to ruins. Leaving meant braving nature gone wild. Staying was a slow death from starvation, violence, and disease.

  Shane remembered the first months after the bombs, before they’d realized quite how screwed they were. Every time a provisional government would try to establish a base, something catastrophic undermined its ability to govern. Communication networks failed along with the power grid. Wildfires and storms destroyed oil pipelines and refineries, wiping out drilling platforms and sinking tanker ships. Fuel reserves dwindled.

  Law enforcement, National Guard, and military units were deployed locally to evacuate survivors and move convoys of citizens inland, only to face the worst tornado season in recorded history. They’d maintained the fiction that the government lived on in some secret place, but within a year, even regional organization was strained, leaving local enclaves to manage themselves as best they could. The remaining US Marshals and surviving law enforcement officers were all that remained of central authority.

  “Raven Rock was designed to survive a nuclear blast,” Lucas said. “So how the hell did it go dark?”

  “Radiation poisoning, if people who shouldn’t have fled ran anyhow?” Shane mused. “Disease. Maybe the AI didn’t go feral—maybe it’s just on autopilot.”

  Lucas shook his head. “No, I think there’s something we’re missing.”

  The Raven Rock Mountain Complex looked like a high-tech coal mine, Shane thought. He and Lucas passed through the gate without being challenged. A service road ran around the facility, exposing two entrances dug into the mountain on one side, and two more on the opposite side. A huge communication tower lay on its side, likely toppled by freak winds.

  “Well, there’s one reason we haven’t heard much from them,” Lucas said with a nod toward the downed tower.

  “They should have had at least basic internet connection, to the old ARPAnet backbone,” Shane replied. “If the universities can still talk to each other, and to some of the medical centers and outlying military posts, why not Raven Rock?”

  They stopped when they saw the entrance to the main bunker. The heavy steel doors had been blasted open from the inside, with the metal curled outward and scorched from the force of the blast.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Lucas muttered.

  Even without dismounting, Shane could see weathered bones among the tall grass, and he wondered whether they belonged to friend or foe. “So the real question is—who blew the place up, and why?”

  “Whatever happened cut them off before they could send a distress signal,” Lucas agreed. “They just stopped communicating.”

  The two men reined in their mounts where they had a full view of the massive main entrances. “You know, we came here loaded up with weapons, thinking we’d have to fight off an army of crazy robots,” Shane said. “But what if the crazy robots are inside?”

  “Like H.A.L.,” Lucas said, referring to the homicidal computer system from the long-ago movie. “Fuck. A complex like that is only as good as its mechanical systems.” His eyes widened as he thought through the ramifications. “The bunker was designed to protect the people inside from an outside threat. But that depended on all of the equipment functioning indefinitely.”

  Shane nodded. “Air recirculation systems. Water and sewage treatment. They had generators, but generators produce exhaust fumes. If their systems got shut off—”

  “Before the Events, the bunker was empty or on a skeleton crew most of the time, right?” Lucas said, growing more excited as a possible explanation presented itself. “And Raven Rock is only six miles from Fort Ritchie. So if Ritchie was creating experimental security bots—artificially intelligent bots—why not test them as the mall cops inside the bunker? They’d have limited exposure to people, be out of sight from prying eyes, and anyone who did encounter them had clearance.”

  “The people who built the bunker thought of everything…except an attack from inside,” Shane said.

  “If we’re right, there’s nothing but corpses in there—and maybe some of those feral bots.”

  “Shit. That means the real threat is at Fort Ritchie,” Lucas muttered. “That’s where the brains of the AI operation would be.” He glanced at Shane. “This might be a good time to build those bombs. I think we’re going to need them.”

  Shane held little hope that they would find survivors as he and Lucas ventured inside Site R. They tied Red, Shadow, and Daisy a distance away, just in case whatever had attacked the bunker lurked nearby. Shane picked his way toward the entrance, careful not to step on what remained of those who made it to the doorway.

  “Do you think the bodies were blasted out, or did they crawl this far and get attacked by a new threat?” Lucas asked. Scavengers had picked the skeletons clean and scattered the bones, which were clearly human.

  Shane squatted down to get a better look. “I don’t see fractures,” he reported. “If they had taken the brunt of the blast, there should be a lot of broken bones. But that’s not what I’m seeing.”

  “So maybe they blew the doors to get away from something on the inside?”

  Shane frowned as he leaned closer, catching his breath as he realized what he was seeing. “I don’t know how the doors were blasted, but this skeleton has a clean cut across its rib cage. It doesn’t look like surgery—it looks like a laser.”

  “Fuck,” Lucas muttered. “So the bots came after the people trying to escape?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  It no longer bothered Lucas to loot the bodies of the dead. Weapons and supplies were essential and hard to find. He pocketed extra ammunition from a weathered utility belt and took the handgun from its holster. Nothing else had survived the elements.

  Lucas and Shane both carried IEDs and flashbang grenades, as well as their weapons. They stepped inside the bunker and turned on their flashlights, which could only illuminate a fraction of the immense space.

  Lucas reached over to toggle a switch, but nothing happened. “Either the power failed, or it’s been cut off at the generator.”

  Shane nodded and used his flashlight’s beam to wordlessly point out the evidence of a battle to the death. Scorch marks marred the walls, along with dark spatters he guessed to be blood. Several paces inside, they came to a robot that looked like a box on tank treads. The high-powered laser rifle protruding from its main casing had been melted to slag, and bullet holes pockmarked its outer shell.

  Lucas gingerly toed the robot, but it did not stir. He and Shane exchanged a look, communicating from long experience without words. Lucas took point, heading farther into the darkened bunker, while Shane followed, watching their backs.

  Site R was huge, an underground city. Shane had done his best to memorize the map they’d been given, but he had no desire to get lost in the warren of corridors. The farther they went inside, the colder it became, and the air not only smelled stale; it also carried the sickly sweet stench of rot.

  “I don’t think all of them made it outside,” Lucas murmured. His light revealed several bodies strewn across the corridor, all showing advanced decomposition. Even the scavengers didn’t want to venture inside this far, Shane noted, taking that fact as an omen.

  “Not soldiers,” Shane replied in a low voice, in case something was listening. His glimpse of the bodies revealed work clothin
g, slacks, and dress shirts, not fatigues or uniforms. In the poor light without forensic equipment, they’d never be able to tell the cause of death with the bodies so far decomposed, but Shane would have bet money on laser fire.

  “Look,” Lucas said, letting his light trace scorch marks on the walls and places where the metal supports had been melted. It didn’t escape Shane’s notice that weapons lay next to most of the rotting bodies. Either their guns hadn’t worked against their attackers, or they had been outnumbered, taken completely by surprise. Maybe both. He made a note to pick up the discarded weapons on their way out—assuming they made it out alive.

  “Are you getting anything from the ghosts?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Nothing useful. Shock, pain, trauma. I don’t think they had any warning.”

  “How far do you want to go? There are miles of tunnels down here.” Shane hated being underground. He fought the claustrophobia of feeling buried alive.

  “Not much farther. Almost there.” Half a corridor later, Lucas shone his light on a door with a sign that read “Office.” The door stood ajar, its thumbprint scanner lock blasted to bits. A whiff warned Shane they would find more bodies inside.

  “Fuck.” Lucas swung the door open, and his light revealed what lay beyond the entrance. Bodies were everywhere; from their positions, Shane could see that they had dropped where they’d been shot. Some of the blasts targeted electronics, blowing out monitors and data towers.

  “This wasn’t random,” Lucas fumed. “The things that shot them took out the communication systems so they couldn’t send for help.”

  A thought occurred to Shane. “Do you think the computer system might still have power? If the bots were part of the grid, we might be able to see if any of them are still active.”

  Shane covered the door while Lucas stepped gingerly over the decaying corpses to check the equipment. “Anything that could have made an outbound connection got fried,” Lucas noted. He moved from one monitor to the next with no luck. The clicking of the keys sounded loud in the crypt-like silence of the bunker.

  “Nothing,” he said, straightening. “And I’m sure as hell not about to go door-to-door looking for trouble. Let’s get out of here.”

  They retraced their steps carefully, noting a few more bots that appeared to have been set on fire or beaten. “Looks like they tried to fight back,” Shane noted.

  “Too little, too late, if the bots got the jump on them.”

  Other bots that they passed on the way out appeared to have just shut down, without any apparent damage. Shane wondered where they’d gotten their orders, and who or what had determined their mission was over. He didn’t want to be around if they woke up again.

  Once they were outside and away from the bunker, Shane took a deep breath, grateful for the fresh air. He knew he wouldn’t get the smell of death out of his nostrils easily, and he missed the camphor and menthol liniment they had always used for the purpose Before.

  “So here’s my bet,” Lucas said as they stashed the weapons they had found in one of Daisy’s packs. He looked just as relieved to be out of the bunker-turned-mausoleum. “Something triggered the bots—or they triggered themselves—and the people in the bunker were under attack before they knew what hit them. The first wave probably died without a chance to fight back, but like you said, it was a big place. Some people had the chance to run or fight. The bots won.”

  “Which doesn’t tell us anything about why the bots attacked, or what called them off,” Shane pointed out.

  “No, but my money is on Fort Ritchie to find the answers,” Lucas replied as they walked back to their horses. Shane couldn’t help looking over his shoulder, but nothing stirred.

  “AI is supposed to be logical,” Shane said. “Where’s the logic in killing the people the bots were supposed to protect?”

  “And the problem with AI is that it can be logical to a fault,” Lucas replied as they swung up to their saddles. “It’s similar to human thought, but without empathy or morality. Suppose a ship was in danger of sinking, and it was run by an AI captain. The ‘logical’ and most simple solution might be to throw crew members overboard to save the ship, but that’s not what a person would do.”

  “We hope.”

  Lucas ignored him. “Not counting Blackbeard. But you get my point. The AI doesn’t factor in the value of human life. A person would toss equipment over, or make life rafts out of mattresses, or something like that.”

  “Wasn’t there some law that was supposed to keep robots from hurting people?” Shane asked as they set out for Fort Ritchie.

  “Only in sci-fi,” Lucas replied. “This was a black ops, skunkworks operation that was creating robot super soldiers. I think ‘hurting people’ was the point—the bots just went after the wrong targets.”

  Shane hummed to himself after they fell silent, anything to distract from the things they had seen at the bunker. He wondered if they would find more of the same at Fort Ritchie. Lucas didn’t make any jokes about Shane’s choice of songs or ability to carry a tune, which told Shane that his partner needed a distraction as well.

  11

  Shane had studied the maps before they set out. The six-mile ride to Fort Ritchie also brought them close to South Mountain State Park, a preserve that included part of the Appalachian Trail, and a favorite outlook called High Rock. And apparently, from the persistent song inside his head, one or more strong daemons.

  “Are you picking something up on the psychic hotline?” Lucas asked, his strained humor providing thin cover for his nervousness.

  “Daemon,” Shane replied. “Between the Trail and High Rock outlook, the park fits the profile for being ‘sacred.’”

  “It’s trying to talk to you?”

  Shane frowned. “I’m hearing a harmony, not just one song. So it’s possible the site has more than one daemon. And yes, I’m pretty sure it knows I’m here, and that I sense it. I think it’s waiting to see what we’re going to do.”

  In its day, Fort Ritchie had been a fairly large base, a small town unto itself. Officially, the base had been abandoned for twenty years, with a string of failed civilian redevelopment proposals to reclaim the site. If the site wasn’t as deserted as the military made it out to be, Shane wasn’t surprised that none of those proposals succeeded.

  Major Harris had drawn them a map of Fort Ritchie from memory, with the caveat that he hadn’t been there for a long time. It was enough to provide a hint of where to start. The central command center was a three-story windowless cement building in the center of the base and included the computer and communications hub.

  They tied their horses and the mule outside the base and packed in their weapons and explosives. Shane would have given a lot to have drone reconnaissance. He and Lucas worked their way toward the command center carefully, unsure whether any of the rogue bots patrolled the empty base.

  A few blocks from their goal, Shane got his first look at one of the security robots. “There!” he hissed, drawing Lucas’s attention.

  The bot reminded him of some of the experimental prototypes he’d seen in Iraq, a metal box on small tank treads with a sensor lens and a gun turret. Lucas startled, eyes widening as he stared at an empty street. Shane pulled his weapon, figuring that the base’s ghosts had given his partner a warning. Lucas came back to himself with a gasp. “Incoming!”

  Two of the bots converged on them, one from either side. Body heat or movement could have triggered them, or perhaps they’d tripped a still-working laser sensor, Shane told himself. They opened fire, pinning Shane and Lucas down at the corners of buildings across the street from each other.

  “Do it!” Lucas ordered. He swung out from cover, using his sniper rifle to target the vulnerable hinges that connected the tread plates as Shane aimed for the sensor lens of the bot nearest him. Their gunshots echoed in the otherwise silent base.

  The shots hit the targets, but the bots kept coming. Shane lobbed a homemade can grenade at the closest bot, letting th
e device roll so that it went under the robot. The explosion lifted the bot off the ground and knocked it over, where it lay with its tread spinning. Lucas’s grenade tore the sensor lens off his bot, and a second shot severed the tread on one side, bringing the robot to a halt, although its gun turret spun to shoot in the direction of the attack.

  Shane lit a Molotov cocktail and sent it flying, engulfing the downed bot in flames when the bottle broke, and the contents ignited. He dodged from cover to fire several rapid shots at the bot’s optics, then came around its blind side to bash the gun turret with a long steel pipe.

  “Shit. You know there have to be more,” Lucas said, keeping his rifle ready for the next wave.

  They sprinted toward the command center. “Work the plan!” Lucas yelled over his shoulder, as he went around the side, looking for a way to climb to the roof.

  Shane laid out the IEDs they constructed, putting down a row of them outside the main door and trusting Lucas to do the same around back before heading upward. Once the explosives were in place, Shane shattered the glass door with a shot and lobbed a Molotov inside to get the bots’—or their master’s—attention.

  Shane took cover, ducking as the first bots rolled over the IEDs and exploded. A second wave followed, triggering the outer row of bombs, because the next round of blasts followed quickly after the first. That left a heap of disabled and damaged bots blocking the doorway, as more of the mechanical sentinels tried to climb over the broken robots to continue to the fight.

  Gunfire sounded from the rooftop, and Shane glanced up but couldn’t see Lucas from this angle. He hoped their crazy plan worked and that Lucas could hold his own against whatever he encountered.

  Knowing the noise of the IED explosions would attract any bots patrolling the rest of the base, Shane wedged himself into a doorway and prepared for an attack. He had a good view of the command center’s main door and the roofline, where the satellite dish and communication equipment were located that Lucas had gone to disable. That wasn’t guaranteed to stop the bots. Shane figured they probably had pre-programmed orders so that they’d remain dangerous even if they got cut off from a central nerve center.