Love in the Robot Dawn

by C. W. Crowe

  It didn’t take long before we’d freed the dog. His face lit with recognition for us as he instinctively tried to wag his tail, only to have his eyes cloud over in pain.

  His back legs were crushed, his lower spinal column too.

  He didn’t understand, of course, so he got up on his front legs and started to try to move, dragging his useless rear along. Quickly, I began to rub his head and he calmed down.

  But then it got worse. He started to whine, to make that little high pitched noise that he’d made when he had begged for jerky. Now he was begging again, begging for us to do something, to make things right.

  Lucy wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and rose. “Keep rubbing him,” she said as she ran off. I figured she was going to get the first aid kit that Lucky had given her.

  *.*.*

  When she returned, I was shocked to see that she didn’t have the medical kit, but instead carried the pistol. “No Lucy!” I said as I realized what she was planning to do.

  She sat beside me and started rubbing Humpey’s head as she whispered to him, “There boy . . . it’ll be all right.” She turned to me, “We’ve got to, Leo. His back legs are crushed. He’s going to die in pain and we can’t let that happen.”

  I realized that, growing up on a farm, she’d probably seen animals put down before. She was right - it would be a mercy.

  She put the gun behind the dog’s head, so Humpey could only see me. I waited for her to fire.

  But instead she put the weapon down. “I can’t do it Leo. I just can’t.” Her lips quivered in anguish and her face was again wet with tears.

  I picked up the gun and shot Humpey.

  *.*.*

  That wasn’t the end of the tears. It took a couple of hours to bury Lucky and Humpey in side by side graves. Lucy made a cross out of some wood from his Victrola and she said a prayer not only for Lucky and his dog, but also for our world that was maybe already dead and we just weren't sure of it yet.

  As we rode away, side by side and holding hands, neither Lucy nor I looked back.

  There was nothing back there for us and our future was 600 miles away.

  Part Four: Los Alamos

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Nightfall

  "What's the range?" Lucy asked.

  She had a lot of faith in my ability to estimate how far the shot would be. "I'd say two hundred yards."

  She grunted. That was a long shot, even for her. The Marlin had proved to be a good, reliable rifle, but it had no telescopic sight, and we couldn't afford to waste ammunition practicing. We had seventy bullets left; Lucy had scored game on twenty four of the twenty six shots she'd made and I was two for four on mine.

  This time we'd spotted a deer - a white tale common to the mountains of New Mexico. According to our GPS, we were only twenty miles from Los Alamos.

  We didn't have a real GPS, of course, we had a large paperback road atlas from 1999 that Lucky had put in one of the bags he'd given us. In two months of traveling on horseback, it had never let us down - some of the highways may have been new or changed, but the rivers and mountains were still there like always. As far as I know, we were never lost.

  We had avoided cities along the way, though some of the towns we'd seen had been largely destroyed. Those bombed out areas turned out to be where the best scavenging was. If the robot planes went to the trouble of bombing, it meant that people had been there and that meant that there had been food. Between Lucy's hunting and our scavenging, I don't think we ever went hungry.

  Apparently the word was out that the robots were targeting groups of people, because we only saw humans occasionally and when we did, they kept away from us.

  We did get cold though. Late fall was unpredictable in these parts - we'd had some snow and some warm days. Another gift from Lucky had been two warm winter coats, several pairs of wool socks and gloves. Lucy was wearing a pair of gloves with the fingers cut out right now.

  It was dusk and below freezing so that we could see our breath in the cold air. As she steadied herself to fire at the deer, she held her breath.

  She slowly squeezed the trigger until it reached its point of release and then the gun jerked upward in her hand as the crack of the shot echoed through the mountains.

  Almost instantly, the deer seemed to jump straight up into the air. It came down on all fours and tried to run, but it instead fell over and was still.

  *.*.*

  Lucy propped the gun alongside the tree she'd been using for support and turned to me. Two months of being married to her had not diminished the joy I felt at seeing her smile. She started to move her hands up to her face when I stopped her with a kiss.

  That habit of hers was the cause of at least some of our fights. One time soon after we'd left Lucky's, I was talking to her, our faces close together, and she moved her hand up. I took it in mine and moved it back down.

  She hadn't realized what she was doing, but I could see her eyes become slits as she prepared to tell me that her harmless habits were none of my business and that if she wanted to cover her face, then she would. It was an argument that we'd had before and usually I joined in which just made it worse.

  This time though, I had an idea. "Fine. Go ahead. Put your hand up like you were doing."

  My voice didn't sound mad and now the whole thing seemed kind of foolish, but she can be stubborn, so she started to raise her hand.

  Before it could cover her nose, I kissed her, quick and hard. When she pulled away she was smiling.

  That had become our accepted way to help her break the habit - that and I started telling her she was beautiful. At first, she frowned and told me not to lie, but lately she'd started to smile just a bit when I told her.

  "Leo, you will think of any excuse to steal a kiss, but we don't have time right now. It's going to be dark soon. You run over there and butcher that deer and I'll build a fire and set up camp for the night."

  That was another habit of hers, giving orders. I responded, "Yes, your highness," grabbed the knife and pistol and ran off before she could come up with one of her snarky comments.

  *.*.*

  I think I'd lost count on how many deer I'd field dressed - it had to be at least a dozen since they were common and provided food for several days when the weather was cool like it had been for most of our trip.

  At first, Lucy and I had tried to do it together and it was quite a mess. But after the second or third time, I started to get the hang of it so that I could skin and gut a deer in fifteen minutes or so. Lucy was glad to leave the "icky" part to me and I was glad she was a good enough shot to keep this meat on the table.

  Since we didn't have any way to properly package all the meat from even a small deer, I normally just brought back the back legs which provided several pounds of steaks or roasts. Fresh venison, cooked over an open fire after a long day on the road was good.

  It was no different tonight. Lucy cooked the steaks and I opened a can of beans. We ate and talked about finally getting to Los Alamos. According to the map, we might be able to get there tomorrow.

  *.*.*

  After dinner we walked down to the small stream we were camping beside. It was one of Lucy's rules that we had to wash up before turning in if there was a stream nearby. That was fine on warm nights, but tonight, if the water hadn't been moving, it would have been frozen over.

  The only good part was that the moon was up and was almost full so I could watch Lucy as she undressed and washed. Living on the road seemed to have been good for her. Her skin had been browned and smoothed out by many hours in the sun and her arms and legs showed the outlines of muscles that hadn't always been visible. She was still thin and not proud of her appearance, but her long legs and wide hips would have been welcomed by many women.

  And by me - along with the rest of her. Her cut had healed nicely, leaving only a prominent white scar.

  Lucky had provided two sleeping bags, but we quickly found that they could be zipped up together. She slid in first and then
I got in beside her and zipped us up. We were near the fire, so the inside of the bag was, for now, warm. The only cool thing in the bag was the pistol, which she insisted we keep inside with us.

  "Are you tired, Lucy Hargrove-Smith?" I asked her. It was the same question I asked every night. Once we started this habit, I realized how pleasurable it could be to repeat things, robot like.

  Some nights she would answer, "Yeah, Mr. Smith, I am," and we would fall asleep in each other’s arms.

  But most nights were like tonight. "Not really, my husband."

  "Well then, what would you like to do?" I asked, like always.

  "A kiss might help me sleep," she said as she turned and kissed me - and then I returned the favor.

  Once I tried to count those kisses, but realized it was no use. There was nothing to make us stop.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Leo's Story

  We didn't quite make it to Los Alamos the next day. We got an early start because Lucy always woke up at the crack of dawn and squirmed and poked me until I was awake too.

  As we broke camp and prepared to mount up and leave, she studied her horse and then mine. "The grazing hasn't been too good for a while now. If we see a field that still has some grass, we should stop and let them get their fill."

  By 4 p.m. we found the perfect place. It was on a bluff overlooking most of the town of Los Alamos and it was, for the moment, snow free and covered with short but still green grass. We could have ridden down the trail to town, but we would have arrived after dark and that didn't seem desirable.

  We pulled up and stopped, side by side. I said, "I think maybe we should stay here tonight. The horses can graze and rest and we can leave early."

  Lucy looked over at me and nodded her agreement. "Sounds fine and besides, I want to talk to you."

  "About what?"

  "About you, Leo. About your past. You've hardly told me anything, you know that? Every time I ask, you give me some little story and that's it."

  I felt something tight around my chest. "That's not true. I . . ."

  She cut me off again! That was a habit that was going to be very hard to get her to break.

  "Tonight, you're going to tell me about your parents. You're going to tell me about Las Vegas, and you're going to tell me about Nick Presser."

  I didn't say anything as we dismounted. There was no need to. I had my orders.

  *.*.*

  We set up camp away from the bluff so that no one in Los Alamos could see our fire in the distance. After some more venison, I balled up my sleeping bag and used it as a cushion for a large round rock that was jutting out of the ground. I sat back against it and motioned for Lucy to join me.

  She smiled and sat, her back against my chest using me as her cushion. She then covered us both with her own sleeping bag though the heat of the fire did reach us.

  I put my arm around her waist and pulled her close. "It's going to be a cool night," I said.

  "I think we'll be warm enough," she answered with a smile in her voice, "But first, tell me about your mysterious past. I should have asked before I accepted that ring; who knows, you might have been a Russian spy or something and now it's too late for me to go hunting for a more acceptable gentleman."

  I answered in my best Russian accent, "Comrade Lucy guess secret. Now must recruit to KGB."

  She laughed and it was like music. She snuggled even closer and said, "Go on, Leo. Tell me."

  We had been on the trail for hours, but she smelled like a clean rain shower on a dry summer day. I took a breath of her and started.

  *.*.*

  "I guess I'll start with my parents. You know most of this. My mom was a proofreader for a publishing company. I was an only child, and most of the time she worked from home. I think she babied me when I was little."

  Lucy shifted slightly to a more comfortable position. "Did you meet any famous authors?"

  "No, I don't remember any. My dad was the opposite. He was gone several days every week. Went to the airport and flew off. He worked for the government."

  Lucy asked, "What did he do?"

  "He was a project manager."

  "What kind of project?"

  Funny, I hadn't been very curious about that and then I remembered why, "It was something classified. He said I shouldn't talk about it. I guess I can talk about it to you though, even if you do turn out to be a spy."

  She giggled and I continued. "We lived in Las Vegas, in a very good area. We had a nice home on a big lot. We had a swing set in the back yard and I made lemonade and sold it on the sidewalk because it was always hot outside."

  "I thought it got cold sometimes and even snowed in Vegas once in a while."

  I'd heard that too. "If it did while I was growing up, I don't remember it. All I remember is that it was hot."

  She put her hand on top of mine and started to rub it with her fingertips. "Go on," she said.

  "Next door lived Nick Presser. He was some kind of doctor - no, that's not right - some kind of biologist. He worked for the government too, I think in the same place as my Dad, but he didn't travel there as much. After the robots came, he didn't go there often at all; that's how I got to know him so well, I guess - he was around after dinner when my dad wasn't. I'd see him outside working on some plants that grew around his house. He told me that he could understand the needs of very complex life forms, but that these simple plants often died because they were too rigid in their requirements - the smallest amounts of too much sun or too little water or the lack of some stray element and they died."

  I paused, remembering Nick's lecture in my mind. Lucy unbuttoned my shirt sleeve, pushed the cuff up to my elbow and started to play with the hair on my arm. For some reason, she liked doing that. "That seems like a strange thing to say to a kid. What were you, fifteen?"

  "Yeah, had to be. By then the robots were all over the news. I remember talking to Nick about them, asking a lot of questions.

  "Soon, he told me that the government had him actually working with the robots, learning about them and helping them build new models so that they looked like humans and could talk. Thinking back on it now, having him there and sharing this information with me was amazing. I'm sure it was all classified, but I was just a kid and I think he needed to talk because he didn’t have any family of his own.

  "So he talked to me. He told me all kinds of things about the robots, like about how they liked to repeat things. He told me about what he called the ‘Channel’; their stream of energy and information that was always there for them to tap into, kind of like the old Internet. Remember, I told you about that back in Ft. Smith almost when we first met."

  Tonight her sounds were calm, almost like a warm smooth body of water. She reached around and unbuttoned my shirt and started to play with the hairs on my chest. "Go on," she said as I was momentarily distracted.

  "Okay. He told me all kinds of stuff about the robots, like he thought they had something up on the ship - something that ran the ‘Channel’; maybe some kind of living super computer based on whatever life form had built them. He didn't think they could have survived for so long just following a preset program. He said the robots themselves didn't know about this and that made him suspicious.

  "But there was one other thing he told me that he warned I should never repeat. This was near the end, right before the robots decided to kill us all. He said others were also studying the robots at a secret base - but not in the same way he did because all the robots at the base were dead."

  “Dead? I didn’t know they could die.”

  I nodded to Lucy. “Maybe dead isn’t the right word. Maybe disconnected is better. Nick told me there was a place near Las Vegas where the robots could not go. He said that if they went there, they’d fall down instantly like someone had removed their batteries. He thought it was because there was some kind of shield around the area which broke their connection to the ‘Channel’.

  She turned over so that both her elbows were on my chest and her face
was inches from mine. “Did the government make this shield? If they have a machine or something that can do that, there should be safe zones for humans where robots can’t go.”

  I smiled at her. “There was only one place without robots as far as I know. You see, the shield wasn’t designed by the government - I don’t think they knew it was even there until the robots came along.

  “But they figured it out. It was a spaceship, an alien spaceship they had been studying for years. The shield somehow came from it.”

  I felt Lucy’s noises change pitch in surprise. “So that means we’re heading for . . .”

  This time I cut her off. “Yep, Area 51.”

  *.*.*

  I could tell she had been feeling romantic, but my words caused her noises to change. She frowned as she thought about it. “So how did you end up in Ft. Smith?”

  “It was the day the robots started to kill us. I was in the back yard, talking to Nick. My parents were inside the house. It was a beautiful evening, though it was hot. Robot aircraft had been flying overhead since they’d first arrived, a couple of years before. They weren’t loud and so it was easy to just ignore them.

  “But this time, they came in low and bombed my house and Nick’s just like they did Lucky’s. I know it can’t be true, but somehow I’ve always believed that my parents were the first people killed by the robots.”

  I stopped talking, searching for words, when Lucy kissed me. It wasn’t a kiss of romance, but of support. “I’m sorry Leo,” she said in a whisper, her lips almost touching mine as she spoke.

  “Well, that’s about it. Nick Presser ran down the street with me, houses exploding on both sides. He gathered up a handful of other kids that had been outside. He kept us safe for a couple of days until the robots came on foot and took us. I don’t know what happened to the rest, but they took me to Ft. Smith.”