by Andy Remic
There came a tiny, tiny buzz.
Voltage flowed through nano-circuits, rapidly expanding, rapidly accelerating until life and flow and instruction and need slammed the tiny machine and trillions of instructions slammed and it felt suddenly—
Alive.
A single pin-prick of light illuminated. White. Piercing.
#proximity series15000
#scanning perimeters... perimeters scanned OK loading files
#instructions received/ k5 integrate interface communications
integrated received understood co-ordinates loading............
#uploaded all date structures OK
There was a low, deep grumble, like a minor earthquake. Inside the vault more pin-pricks of light glowed, and the hundreds, the thousands of machines illuminated one another in an eerie, eldritch witch-light.
#systems accelerating fully online OK
#sequences initiated; structures analysed
#destinations secured
#END.
Distantly, a door slid revealing light—and freedom. As one, the six thousand Detonation PopBots jostled and moved, lights blinking, feeding neatly out through the horizontal slot and speeding off up, into the sky, into the snow, into the night...
~ * ~
The HTank rumbled through long quiet streets and stopped, grinding stone to dust. The hatch opened, and Franco popped up like a mole from a hole, peering about myopically with his TRISPIES flickering through a myriad of different filters.
“Don’t be seeing nuffink up here.”
“The HTank’s scanners work fine, Franco. Get back down.”
“I’m just making sure,” Franco said, testily.
“No, you’re playing at being a superhero secret agent.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that! A man has to have his fantasy.”
“I saw enough of your fantasies back at Porky Pauper’s depot.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“When Olga gave you that big snog.”
“Hey, that was under protest.”
“Didn’t look that way to me.”
“She grabbed my head! Lifted me off the ground! I kicked my little legs!”
“So what? From where I was standing, it looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
“Get stuffed.”
“Temper.”
“I was not enjoying it.”
“I’m sure you were using your tongue.”
“I was not using my damned bloody tongue!”
“And I’m sure there was a little bit of trouser action going on.”
“Meaning?”
“You know what I’m meaning. Down below.”
“You think Olga’s kiss excited me?”
“Certainly looked that way. Although maybe you were just twisted at a funny angle.”
“I didn’t get a hard-on, Keenan. That’s slander, that is. I could have you sued. That’s derogatory inflammation, mate.”
“Franco, the only thing inflamed was your pants.”
“I’ll sue! I will! Don’t push me! I’ll sue!”
“You think you’d find a good zombie lawyer knocking around down here then, do you? Someone who could really get his claws into your case. Really get to use his brain.”
“Very droll.”
“Are you getting your arse down here, Franco, before a sniper picks you out as a big fat-headed peacock target? Gods lad, we’re in the middle of a war zone!”
Franco dropped below, face sulky. Even Xakus was smiling at the exchange. The mood seemed to have lifted a little; an oasis in the midst of the storm. Cam spun close, and made a large sucking kissing slurping noise.
“I love to watch the course of true love.”
“Bugger off.”
“She’ll be waiting for you,” crooned Cam.
“I hope you rust.”
“She’ll never, ever stop loving you, baby.”
“I hope you get magnetised.”
“She’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth!”
Franco swung a punch at Cam, but the PopBot described a neat swerve around swishing air. “Not catch me like that again, little Franco punchy. Oh no. I remember the last time.”
“Yeah, well, you’re just pissed because of the ‘pub incident’.”
“No. I’m just pissed because that’s the way I am, it’s hardwired into my motherboard, and you’re the way you are, an annoying little midget with a comedy ginger beard, because you’re a natural born muppet.”
“Sticks and stones will break my bones.”
“Hopefully,” said Cam.
Keenan dropped some gears, and eased the HTank forward. Matrix drives hissed cold fusion and the machine crept through towering, darkened streets. Occasionally they passed groups of zombies, but none made a move to attack the HTank.
“Can’t they smell us?” said Keenan. “Something’s changed. The others were hell-for-leather bent on our extermination, HTank or no.”
“Things are changing.” Cam buzzed close to his ear. “These are the weak. The stragglers. The ones left behind.”
Keenan stared at the PopBot. “Behind... from what?”
“The deviants seemed to have formed hierarchies. Groups. Armies. Maybe this is just a natural zombie selection, Kee. A kind of zombie evolution. Maybe these are simply the weak. Those left to die. Cannon fodder, yeah?”
“I know the feeling,” said Keenan, who on several occasions had been abandoned by army ‘officials’. Expendable was a word that tasted bad on his tongue. “So if we see a larger group of deviants, then they’re the strong ones? The... selected?”
“It certainly looks that way.”
“Shit. It’s as if they’re developing military habits.”
“Freaky, isn’t it?”
Keenan ploughed on, travelling several miles through deserted city streets filled with nothing more than corpses and debris. Black snow still tumbled, interjected by occasional rants of sleet and rain. The whole world, The City, seemed to be holding its breath. Waiting for something. Waiting for something bad.
As they closed on The Hammer Syndicate, they came upon a street of staggered, scattered, burning cars. The HTank eased through the fire, nosing blackened vehicles out of the way and grinding along, for another mile or so, before—following Franco’s PAD directions—they entered a long, narrow, dark alleyway. Some kind of barricade had been erected at the far end. It was twenty feet high, made up of a teetering wall of cars interspersed with what appeared to be heavy industrial machinery.
Keenan’s eyes flickered to his scanners... nothing. But then he saw them, a horde, silent and motionless, waiting beyond the jagged wall of steel and wood and iron and concrete.
“I see them, too,” breathed Franco, leaning forward in his seat.
“They’re not on the scanners, Cam.” Keenan clicked in annoyance. “How the hell can that be?”
“I bet it’s because they’re dead,” said Franco.
“Yes. No heat,” said Cam. “They’re the living dead. An HTank works on thermals.”
“See!” beamed Franco. “I was right, I was. Bloody right! They don’t call me Franco ‘Mr Intuitive’ Haggis for nothing, you know.”
Keenan revved the HTank’s engines. Fumes hissed from exhaust. “They don’t call you that at all,” he said quietly. “Cam, can you make out how many?”
“About...” the machine scanned with tiny clicks. “A thousand.”
“Yeah? That many? Well, we need to get through. This is going to be damn messy.”
“Let’s hope they’ve no heavy artillery!” beamed Franco optimistically.
Beyond, the silence had risen through moans, risen in rapid steps to screams and howls and flames flickered leaping fast along the barricade in a sudden roar of ignition. Fifty foot sheets of fire whooshed into the air, orange and yellow and green, smashing windows in skyscrapers four storeys above. Glass tinkled down like crystal snow.
“What are they protecting?” muttered Keena
n, revving the HTank again. Matrix engines hissed.
Several bullets whined through the dark, sending showers up the HTank’s hull.
Cam spun for a few moments, clicking as he scanned. Then he said, voice low, “You’re right, Keenan. They seem to be protecting an area. The zombies have formed a barricade in all the streets leading towards The Hammer Syndicate HQ.”
“Why the hell would they do that? Why would they want to protect a Syndicate, of all things? They’re the bloody criminals, aren’t they? The bad guys!”
“I don’t know,” bubbled Franco, eyes rolling wild, “but I reckon we’ll have some fun finding out!”
“Are you insane?”
Franco winked. And growled, “Better believe it.”
“Hold on tight. We’re going in.”
“Be careful, Keenan.” Cam’s voice was a digital whisper, a bad feeling creeping over the machine. His scanners raged, sweeping back and forth over the barricade, the thousands of zombies and the heavy plant machinery embedded in the burning, roaring wall. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his silicon.
“We have no choice, my friend.”
Keenan revved the HTank hard and with a grinding of teeth, slammed the massive, brutal twin-gun tank in a belching charging advance, forward... a screaming push towards the burning barricade and the thousands of howling, chanting, gun-toting deviants beyond.
At the last moment, Cam’s scanners slammed him. His digital soul paled. And Cam saw it...
Death.
Waiting for them.
“No!” screamed Cam, but his voice was lost in the roar of the HTank’s charge.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 12
DETONATION BOULEVARD
The HTank slewed at the last moment, turning sideways with a shower of sparks and showering concrete, to cannon into the wall of burning cars and metal. Deep clangs sang. The wall rocked, teetering dangerously. Fire rained down like burning hail.
Beyond, the zombies let out a massive roar, deep and reverberating and impossibly choreographed. It was as if they had a hive mind.
Through the HTank’s thick, armoured walls, Keenan, Franco and Xakus felt the terrible heat of the raging inferno.
“What is it, dickhead?” snapped Franco, scowling at the bobbing machine. Sweat rolled down his face and dripped from his ginger beard. “We was about to have us a slurry when you went all screamy like a little girl!”
“Well, let me think,” snapped back Cam. “Maybe it’s two things. Maybe on the one hand it’s the fact I’ve just located the old disused tunnel system that will lead us beneath the zombies without having to crush hundreds of potential humans under heavy HTank tracks. After all, they were once like you, and loathe as I am to admit it, related to you in a deviated and evolutionary kind of way.”
“And the second reason?”
Despite the dark interior of the HTank, despite the confined space and despite the smell from Franco’s sandals, it seemed as if Cam was grinning. “Ahh. That would be the modest yield atomic weapon I’ve just pin-pointed at the centre of the barricade. Which would, no-doubt, be triggered into detonation by something heavy, for the sake of argument shall we say an HTank, attempting to ram its way through.”
“Good reason,” said Franco, beaming. “Well done that PopBot. Congratulations. Seriously!”
“Well, they don’t call me Cam ‘Clever Bastard’ PopBot for nothing, you know.”
“Hey hey! I see what you did there! You clever little bugger.”
“Charming, Franco. You are a true gentleman.”
Keenan tore a hole in the nearest wall turning the HTank about, and powered back down the alleyway trailing bricks and with howling zombies roaring after them and sending bullets screaming from juddering hot-barrels. They seemed disappointed.
Cam directed Keenan, and with difficulty he negotiated the thumping, grinding HTank towards a nearby underground subway entrance. The HTank, squealing and sparking, dropped its nose and squeezed down a set of steep narrow steps amidst dust and a shower of rubble, and to the tinkling soundtrack of ceramic wall-tiles, bashed free to shatter against steelconcrete.
The HTank descended, entered a wall of darkness, turned left, then right, bright lights slashing out to cut a hole from the night sky. It descended, warily, down yet more steps with tracks grinding and squealing and concrete crumbling all around. They came to a set of aero-escalators, and the HTank ploughed on through, and down, destroying bubbles and rubber and grinding a huge curl of safety rail before it emerged in a shower of dragging sparks and flapping rubber.
In the confines of the cab, Franco hunkered down, peering at the control screens. “Watch that wall, Keenan,” he said. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “And that escalator there don’t hit it! Shit man, you bloody buggering well hit it. Just watch where you’re going I said watch where you’re going shit man you nearly took out a cooling tower and that could have drowned us and you keep smacking into brick walls and that’s just sloppy driving that is. Watch out!”
“What?”
“That, there.”
“What, where?”
“That!” squeaked Franco.
Keenan halted, easing free of the accelerator, the HTank rumbling around him, and turned in his chair. He stared hard at Franco’s innocent face.
“What?”
“Shut up, dickhead.”
“I was just trying to help.”
“Well, you’re not.”
“You do keep hitting things.”
“The fucking HTank is wider than the fucking tunnel. What do you expect?”
“I bet Pippa wouldn’t hit anything.”
“Just shut up, you damn dribbling backseat driver.”
Franco, ruffled, scratched his beard. “Well,” he huffed, “I know when I’m not wanted.”
“Really? Well you never take the hint.”
The HTank ground on, lower and lower beneath the city streets. Eventually it levelled onto a platform and Keenan pulled a lever, drawing the ponderous vehicle to a shuddering halt. He slipped the hatch, popped his head into the stale, musty air of the deserted train system. He shivered as a super-chilled breeze flooded him. The place felt... ancient; desecrated, like a violated tomb.
He gazed around in the stagnation, looking carefully at moss-infested tiled walls, damp-blackened peeling posters, rotting, sagging timber benches; the place was a ghost shell, a relic of an ancient abandoned world. There were old posters for books, films, concerts, all caught in the stark glow of the HTank’s lights. It was like stepping into the past. Keenan shivered again, dropping back into the relative comfort of the HTank.
“It’s a dead world out there,” said Franco.
Keenan nodded. “The whole city’s dead. Well, undead.”
Franco shivered. “Gives me the heebie jeebies.”
“Franco, everything gives you the heebie jeebies.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because I’m a sensitive guy.”
The HTank juddered forward, through the black, through the silence, and Keenan eased it down towards the abandoned rails where once, a millennium ago, underground trains thundered. “Cam, you sure this train system is dead?”
“I’m sure. Dead as a donut.”
“You’re absolutely positive now? I don’t want to end up with two thousand tonnes of train up my arse when we’re stuck out in No Man’s Land. You hear?”
Cam, rotating with a gentle flicker of condescending orange lights, snorted, “Trust me, Keenan. I’m a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. I have integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and Put Down™ War Technology! You think I don’t know when there’s a damn train due? This place has been deserted for a thousand years! All the DBs say so. And anyway, we only have to travel a few klicks. Should only take us five minutes.”
Keenan nodded. He eased the HTank around, and with a giant clunk, down onto ancient rusted tracks. The aged metal squealed beneath the
HTank. Keenan eased the vehicle away from the platform, and into the tunnel opening. Like a hungry mouth, it swallowed them.
~ * ~
“I can smell fire.”
Keenan glanced at Franco. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Since when did you train as a sniffer dog?”