by C. W. Crowe
I nodded at her and said, "This way!" as we sprinted towards the trees. We couldn't stand around out in the open though the sky was at least momentarily clear of aircraft.
As we ran, I thought about what I'd seen - how the robots had crossed the river and how some of them were walking directly towards the town of Dora. Still, they probably didn't know we were here because they were fanned out in all directions.
It had taken us two hours to get this far, but robots are faster than humans. I estimated we'd have no more than thirty minutes until they arrived. We could run, but that would only delay the time when we'd be captured.
"What now, Leo?" Her voice was soft with a hint of fear in it. The idea that we'd be captured; that they would take Lucy away was too much. I was the one who had lived with robots. I was the one who knew how they behaved. Lucy was counting on me to come up with some sort of plan.
Desperately, I looked all around, hoping to see something, anything, that would get us out of this trap. My eyes ended up looking into Lucy's. A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek as I heard the hissing of another aircraft overhead.
That was it! I put my arm around Lucy and led her further into the trees. "Lucy, listen to me. The robots are creatures of habit. They aren't very creative at all. They'll be looking for us in the most organized way possible though. Each will scan an area around them and they'll be spaced so that they look at every square inch. They'll find any human hiding in a bush or a gully and they'll cover the most ground possible in the shortest time."
Another tear followed the first one. I wanted to reach up and wipe it away, but there was no time.
"But that's it, don't you see? They have an expectation as to where humans will be. And that expectation is that we'll be on the ground. They know we can't fly, so it would be inefficient for them to look up."
I saw hope dawn on her face. I think that was the first time I ever thought the word "beautiful" when I looked at her. "It's the trees, Lucy. We've got to climb up, find a place where we're secure and hidden as much as possible."
*.*.*
We ended up about thirty feet above ground, wedged together in a series of forks that let us sit at least securely, if not all that comfortably.
Lucy tied our treasure bag tightly to a limb, but kept out the blanket. The air was warm now, but if we had to stay up here a while, it would get cool.
"Sit up," she said as we both struggled to find a comfortable position.
I did as I was told and she slid her arm around my shoulders and positioned herself so that we were practically embracing each other. "There," she said. "We aren't likely to fall now."
She was right, of course, but as I listened for the arrival of the robots, I smelled her hair.
*.*.*
It didn't take long at all.
First, we again heard multiple aircraft pass overhead, but this time they seemed to be heading back towards Ft. Smith. Maybe they had reached the limit that they calculated two humans could travel in the allotted time.
Then the walking robots arrived. Lucy heard them first; I knew that because she tightened her grip on me and I felt her shiver slightly.
When they actually arrived in Dora, the sight of them made me want to shiver too. Down below, we watched as humanoids jogged into view in perfect synchronization, each foot landing at exactly the same time. Below us, Lucy and I watched in horror as they spread out over the town, then stopping - probably for instructions - before moving to search all the houses.
While that was going on, a group of three of them walked into our grove of trees. One was a female model dressed in a yoga leotard, another a large man wearing bib overalls, and the third was a child. I could see her clearly and her face never showed the slightest emotion. The robots weren't playing their human roles now; they had a job to do instead.
The child lined up with the other two as they scanned the area. She was stopped directly below us.
I moved my eyes to check on Lucy and she must have sensed it, because she shifted hers too so that we were looking directly at each other. She seemed scared but in control. I nodded ever so slightly, and she did the same. For the moment, we were okay.
I'm no tree expert, but I guessed that we were in some type of oak tree. It was tall with a lot of limbs and it had large green leaves that provided cover for us. The hissing of another robot aircraft passed at just that moment, and I looked up instinctively, seeing something that made my chest clench in fear.
It was a leaf. A single leaf that had chosen this time to fall. I'd never had any kind of advanced math, but my brain calculated that the leaf would fall very close to the girl robot right below us. It might even land right on her head.
And what would happen if it did? Maybe nothing - maybe she'd note it but decide it was of no significance.
Or maybe she was connected to their main ship and was sharing information and receiving instructions from it. Maybe some kind of super robot computer brain would wonder why a leaf was dropping from overhead when it was not really autumn. Maybe, just maybe, that computer would order the robot to have a look upwards.
If it did, we were caught. I had a vision flash through my mind - a picture of Lucy and I jumping out of the tree, hoping we'd die when we hit the ground.
Lucy felt my alarm because we were practically hugging each other. She had her left arm around my shoulders and her right across my chest, holding tightly to me. But now she let go with her right hand. In an instant, I was certain she was going to jump. My arms were encircling her waist and I tightened my grip. Even though I'd just thought of it myself, the idea of her jumping and dying was more than I could handle.
But she wasn't trying to jump. Instead, she moved her hand silently and with perfect grace about six inches and caught the leaf in midair.
Below, the robot child never moved.
Slowly, Lucy put her hand back on my chest and gave me a squeeze, still holding the leaf. I wanted to give her one too, but I was already holding her as tightly as I could.
*.*.*
It only took the robots about fifteen minutes to search the town and then they lined back up and left at a jog, still heading west, still looking for their escaped humans.
The robots made quite a lot of noise as they jogged away, so the silence we heard afterwards was evidence that they were indeed gone. Still, we waited silently and unmoving for another few minutes just to be sure.
Finally, Lucy whispered to me. She was so close I could feel her breath on my ear. "You can relax your death grip if you want. I'd like to be able to breathe again."
I had been holding her tight. "Sorry," I said as we extracted ourselves from each other and sat on separate limbs. Lucy flicked the leaf into the air and it floated to the ground. It landed precisely where the robot kid had been standing.
"You saved our bacon with that catch."
"Just luck. Lucky you saw it and lucky it landed practically in my hand."
We were still whispering. I suddenly felt chilled and realized it was because I wasn't holding her any longer.
"Can we go down?" she asked.
"I don't think we should. You see how fast they're moving - they'll jog out until they reach a point where two humans couldn't have made it in the time we had. Then they'll turn around and head back to Ft. Smith. I'd guess they'll be back through here within a couple of hours at the most."
"And then what?"
It was a good question. "I really have no idea. They believe two humans ran away. They have searched the area where the two humans must be and they are not there. So what do they do? Hopefully, some robot fuse will blow or something; maybe they'll convince themselves that we didn't actually escape, but I don't know."
She nodded and stood up, holding onto a high branch for balance. My face must have registered alarm because she said, "I'm stiff from sitting." She let go of the limb with one of her hands and put it in front of her face. I'm sure she didn't even realize she'd done it. "So what now, Mr. Smith? I know we've got to run
, but where do we run to?"
I stood up beside her and resisted the temptation to explain once again that she didn't need to cover her face. That normally led to a fight, so this time I offered her my own free hand. She smiled and took it.
I wanted to simply tell her I had no idea where we should go, but when I opened my mouth to speak, something else came out. "Lucy . . . remember when you told me about yourself? And how you asked about me, about my life before the robots?"
Her noises changed to wariness. She knew something was up, so she just nodded her understanding.
"I told you that I was an average kid with average parents and an average life. That was true, but my parents worked for the government before the robots killed them and I knew some other government people too. They told me about a place, a place where robots won't go. I . . . I'm not sure if it's still true, but maybe we should go see. There may be other free humans there."
I could see a million questions on her face, but as soon as I mentioned other humans, she changed. "Where is this place?"
"I grew up near Las Vegas. It's near there - almost 1300 miles from here."
She was silent for a long time, staring directly at me so intently I wondered if I'd said something wrong, if she was mad at me. Finally she said, "Okay, Leo. It doesn't seem like we've got anywhere else to go. I'm game."
Part Three: Travel
Chapter Fourteen: Rescue
Three days into what I called “The Wilderness” had both improved and degraded our position. We were probably about 30 miles west of where we began, which was at least a start on our long journey.
And we’d found some other houses with useful things in them, while no robots bothered us. There was a farmhouse, way out in the country, where Lucy entered only to find an older couple in the living room, dead. The woman was sitting in a recliner with her ankles crossed and her hands in her lap. She had a towel around her neck and a hole in the side of her head. The man was crumpled beside her on the floor. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.
There was a gun on the floor, a pistol, but no matter how hard we looked, we couldn’t find any ammunition. We took the gun anyway, along with all the canned food, some clothes and another bag for our growing stash of supplies. The couple hadn’t run out of supplies - maybe they’d just run out of hope.
We tried to stick to the back roads and even walk across fields when we could. There were some harvestable items in these farm fields even though they hadn’t been worked in quite a while. We found some isolated stalks of corn, some potatoes that we dug up, and a large area with blackberries growing wild.
That was the good part. So far, we were able to forage enough food to keep us going.
But there was something else, something that bothered me. It was Lucy. Ever since we left the place where we hid in the trees, she’d been cool to me. I’d learned back in Ft. Smith that she could be moody at times, but she was also a lot of fun and she’d even kissed me four times.
This section of the trip hadn’t led to any kissing though; or hand holding, hugging, or anything. Oh, she was civil to me, like we were brother and sister, forced to camp out together. I’d asked her if I’d done anything wrong or said something I shouldn’t have, but she only answered, “Don’t be silly.” I could tell from her noises that she was holding something back. Otherwise, we got along fine - no fights or anything.
And so, as our dinner was heating in our single pan we’d taken from the kitchen of that farmhouse, we laid out our sleeping gear beside the fire - her stuff on one side and mine on the other. It would be our third night since our escape.
The evening was warm as the sun set. We’d decided to camp on the banks of a little stream that had clear water which babbled soothingly as it passed over some rounded stones. “Think we’ve got enough wood for the night?” Lucy asked.
It would get chilly, probably into the low sixties. “Yeah, I think so. But there’s plenty along the bank if we need another log or two.”
She nodded and stirred our stew. Tonight we were having a can of corned beef hash, along with corn, water and an apple we got from a tree that still had a few on it. It sounded strange, but Lucy was a good cook and we’d been walking most of the day so we were hungry.
She looked at me, her eyes open wide to see in what little was left of the daylight. I felt something catch in her noises, like what she was going to say was important. “Leo, we haven’t seen anyone alive. In the time after my parents and the last of our neighbors that stayed behind died, I never saw another soul until I walked to Ft. Smith. I heard that the robots didn’t initially try to kill humanity directly; they just put people almost instantly back in the dark ages where they died by the millions. But shouldn’t there still be survivors? Shouldn’t some people have set up communities where they can farm and defend themselves from those who might want to steal from them?”
Why would this be on her mind? Sure, we hadn’t seen anyone, but we’d been out in the country - there hadn’t been that many people around out here in the middle of nowhere even before the robots came.
I had no answer to her question about other people. “Your guess is as good as mine, Lucy. It might be some disease that took most of them, or maybe they fought each other to death over the last Oreo cookie. I don’t know. But I do think you’re right and it’s likely that there are some groups that are still out there. Though I suppose the robots could be going after them if they get big and noticeable.”
She nodded. “If . . . when we run across some of them. Do you think you’ll want to join them or push on to Las Vegas?”
Was it the long trip that was bugging her? “It would be up to them, I guess, and up to us. If we like them and they like us, maybe. Vegas is a crap shoot anyway and there’s a good chance we won’t make it.”
She frowned and put her hand over her face again so that she talked into her palm as she spoke. “I thought you’d say that.” Her voice had a hint of sadness in it. What in the world had I done now?
I had about had enough and raised my voice. It was the way our arguments usually started. “Look Lucy, if you don’t want to go to Vegas just say so. We can go anywhere you want and . . . “
She cut me off. “No, Leonard. I want to go. But now I’m tired and dirty. I’m going to wash up; will you watch the stew?”
She reached in the cloth laundry bag and pulled out a travel sized bottle of shampoo and a towel. “I’ll be back in a few and then we can eat. I want to get some sleep too. And I’m too tired to argue.”
She walked away leaving me to think, “What argument?" We hadn't even made a good start on one.
*.*.*
I spent the next few minutes stirring the stew as I stewed internally. Maybe it was me after all, but not because I had done something dumb. Maybe she just plain didn't like me; thought I was too young for her. Didn't women always look for older men? I was about a year younger than her - could that make so much of a difference?
I frowned and took the opportunity to burp out loud when I realized it had been a while since she'd left. I'd become so used to her noises that I didn't notice them a lot of the time. Now, I wasn't sure I could hear them at all.
My heart started to beat fast enough that I could feel it in my chest as I rose and looked in the direction she'd gone, straining to focus on hearing her.
There! It was weak, but I had it. My normal range wasn't much more than a hundred feet, so I started to walk towards her.
The signal got easier to hear and it became clear that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong!
*.*.*
The sun was fully down and there was no moon; and even with stars starting to appear, it was quite hard to see where I was walking on the sharp banks of the creek. I moved into the center of the stream, but that had its own set of challenges. For one thing, it was full of slippery rocks so I had to move deliberately, not wanting to fall or surprise Lucy while she was bathing. That would cause an old fashioned screaming fight.
Beside a thick growth of foliage that lined the creek, I saw her and my heart went from hard beating to full stop in less than a second.
I saw Lucy. She was topless with a man's arms encircling her chest from behind, pulling her towards him. Another man had her feet. She was kicking and resisting, but in a flash I knew what he was doing.
He was trying to pull her jeans off.
*.*.*
Just when I needed it the most, my mind went blank. I should have sized up the situation and come up with some sort of plan, but that was out of the question. The modern day man with all his veneer of civilization and abilities to reason was gone, leaving only the primitive parts of me still functioning.
I reached down into the creek and my hand found a large stone, almost too big and heavy for me to hold. But, at that instant, I think I could have used a rock twice as heavy and never noticed it.
Without a single conscious thought, I ran towards Lucy and her attackers.
*.*.*
The guy with his arms around her chest was the furthest away and was facing me, so he saw me first and called out a warning to his companion. He let go of Lucy's chest and I saw her fall almost in slow motion into the water. The man reached behind him and pulled out a gun.
If I had been my normal self, I might have slowed down and had second thoughts, but I was a wolf, a lion, a predator with no thoughts other than blood lust. I wanted to attack and kill and taste blood. Nothing could stop me.
The man with the gun fired. I heard the noise, but didn't pause or hesitate. I'd read stories where people on drugs sometimes kept fighting after being shot multiple times. Those drugs would not have done anything to me at that point, because I would have kept going until either I was dead or those two were. One little bullet, or two or three, wouldn't make a difference unless they were truly and quickly fatal.