Metal

by Thomas Hall

“What? Of course, it’s my name. What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve been lying to us.”

  “I haven’t.”

  Richard nodded but it was clear he didn’t believe him.

  Brett looked for the others but there was no sign of them . Had they found other places to sleep, or had they sent Richard to do their dirty work?

  “You’re pretty handy with a Blaster,” Richard said.

  He felt a pit open in his stomach.

  “Knew exactly what to do, didn’t you?”

  Brett said nothing.

  “Who are you really?”

  “No one,” Brett said, shaking his head. The lie was so old now that it had started to become true. Once upon a time he’d been a leader in the Resistance, but not anymore. Now he was only Brett, runaway and coward.

  “Don’t lie to me Brett,” he said.

  “I’m not lying.”

  Richard shook his head. “Victoria reckons you’re a Machine.”

  “What!” he said. He tried to laugh at how ridiculous the idea was but no sound came out.

  Richard shrugged. “She says it stands to reason that they’ve got spies. We’ve seen what they can do, making artificial skin wouldn’t be a problem for them.”

  Spies, Brett thought. They could have spies. It made sense. Although why the group would be worth spying on was another question.

  “I’m not a Machine,” he said.

  “I know you’re not,” Richard said.

  “So what do you think?”

  Richard shook his head.

  “I think there’s something you’re not telling us, and I want to know what it is.”

  Brett couldn’t argue with that. If he was putting his life in someone else’s hands, then he would want to know everything he could about them. Which, come to think of it, was exactly what he was doing. And he didn’t feel as if he knew Richard any better than Richard knew him.

  “What about you?” Brett said. “What’s your story?”

  “I haven’t got a story,” Richard said.

  Brett nodded. He’d heard that often enough. Don’t ask, don’t tell, meant something different now.

  “Sam knows me, so do the others. Seems to me like no one knows you.”

  “Sam does,” Brett said.”You don’t think he’d have insisted I come on this trip unless he trusted me, do you?”

  “No.”

  “But he hasn’t told you why that is, has he?”

  “No,” Richard admitted.

  Brett shrugged and tried to seem nonchalant. “Maybe you should take that up with him then, don’t you think?”

  He watched Richard and tried to guess how the rest of their conversation was going to go. But it was impossible to tell. They had both escaped from certain death today and that could do strange things to a man. There was no reason to believe that Richard wouldn’t take his frustrations out on him.

  “Maybe I will,” Richard said. But he didn’t get up to leave.

  Brett waited, sensing that now was not the time to push in any direction, let alone make any sudden movements.

  “I’ll be watching you though,” Richard said finally. And then he did stand up.

  Brett watched Richard walk back across the church to where he assumed the rest of the group was sleeping. He didn’t relax until the other man had ducked down out of sight.

  He felt as if he would never be able to get back to sleep. There were so many questions, so many dangers. It wasn’t only the Machines that he had to worry about now. There were plenty of people in his own group who would be willing to do him harm.

  CHAPTER 11

  THICK CLOUD BLANKETED THE SKY MAKING IT DIFFICULT to see much. He could see that the river was dry though. Brett stood between Joanna and Lisa and stared at it. None of them spoke. Somehow, despite the many horrors that they had all witnessed, this one was the worst. It meant something more. It meant that something fundamental had changed in the world. Even if humanity overcame the Machines, they might find that the Earth was no longer habitable.

  There were boats embedded in the river bed, their hulls cracked and split. There was no sign of life, except in the distance where he could hear battle.

  “We need to keep moving,” Samuel said. “It’s not far.”

  Brett nodded and so did the others, but none of them moved. The death of London was a captivating sight.

  “What do you think happened?” Joanna said.

  The conversation didn’t go anywhere. No one wanted to consider the possibility that the water was gone forever. The ocean fed the Thames; if there was no water here, did it mean there was no water there?

  A deep boom, like thunder, shook them from their reverie. Brett looked away from the dry river. There were flashes of light on the other side, followed moments later by the rumble of Blaster fire.

  “They’re getting closer,” he said. “We need to go now.”

  No one responded.

  “Come on,” Samuel said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  One by one they turned away from the river and walked towards the devastated city. None of them spoke.

  The sights and sounds of the battle brought back memories. On several occasions, Brett found himself considering a return to active duty.

  Until he remembered Dina.

  The worst part was that he couldn’t remember her without remembering what he had done. He was sure that he had happy memories of their time together.

  “Are you okay?”

  Brett turned and saw Joanna walking beside him. She smiled and he saw how difficult that was for her.

  “It’s scary out here,” she said.

  “It’s not so bad,” Brett said, unsure why he felt the need to offer her comfort. “You just need to be sensible.”

  She nodded. After a short while she looked at him again. “Did you… are you from London?”

  Brett shook his head. “Are you?”

  “I’m from Oxford.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  Joanna shrugged.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said.

  “We can talk about something else,” he said.

  They walked on in silence for a moment and it seemed that they weren’t going to talk at all.

  They passed a building with some lights still on. Brett looked, but didn’t see any movement and guessed that it was the ghost of life. The people who had lived there were long gone. The lights would continue until the generator ran out of fuel or an EMP got them.

  There was a car park full of cars which were now worth about as much as scrap metal. It was possible that somewhere in the world a car was still useful. Here it was more than likely to get you killed, if you could even get it started.

  A wholefoods store with the door wedged open emitted the smell of rotten fruit. It seemed that, even at the end of days, people hadn’t wanted to eat those.

  They walked for several minutes before Joanna spoke again.

  “My parents were lecturers at the university,” she said.

  Brett stepped over the torso of a Droid. He turned to look at Joanna and wondered why she was telling him this.

  “Did you know they kept the schools open?” she said.

  “No,” Brett said, although that wasn’t completely true. He had been a soldier, far from the centre of power, but stories tended to travel and he’d heard rumours. The government had expected a quick victory over the Machines. The assumption had proven to be incorrect.

  “They had classes every day. People were dying and they still expected teachers to teach and students to learn.” She shook her head, amazed now at the naivety of the decision.

  “There should have been an evacuation,” Brett said.

  She nodded.

  He knew there had been discussions about it. They might have gone ahead, if it weren’t for the fact that nowhere was safe to evacuate too. The war had spread and the Machines evolved. In a short amount of t
ime the war covered much of the planet.

  “My parents used to drive to work together. They worked in different colleges, but they were close.” She smiled. “While they were at work a woman from our street took me to school and picked me up. Until one day when she didn’t.”

  Everyone had their story, everyone was where they were for a reason. Brett had never been one to talk about his past, but he understood the need that others felt to do so.

  “The street was bombed while I was at school,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Brett said.

  She shook her head. It took a moment for her to recover herself to be able to continue. “My parents stopped teaching. The schools were still open, but they didn’t go back. Our house was gone so we had to leave.”

  “And you came to London?”

  Joanna shook her head again. Of course, they hadn’t come to London. If you were running away from a terrible war, the last thing you did was run into the middle of it.

  “Where did you go?”

  “My uncle had a boat in Portsmouth. My dad said we could use it to get away.”

  He didn’t want to hear the end of her story. It was bound to end in the same way as all the others; her parents had been killed on the journey, she’d managed to escape. She ran, got lost and somehow ended up in London. Then Samuel or Richard or someone else found her and took her underground. It was tragic, made even more so by the commonality of it, which meant that no one could feel unique in their grief.

  “They died in Falmouth,” she said, sniffing and straightening up, as if telling it had given her a kind of strength.

  “Machines?” Brett said.

  “A gang,” she said. “They tried to take our food, but my dad wouldn’t give it to them. He told me to run and hide, when I went back to look for them, they were both dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brett said. It was terrible luck. The gangs had been a threat for a while in the early days of the war, but their shelf life had been short. They had been obvious targets for the Machines. Their number and organisation was taken as a threat in the same way as the army and, later, the Resistance.

  “Lisa found me,” she said. “She brought me to Sam and he said I could stay.”

  Brett nodded and they fell back into silence. There was nothing else to tell and he wasn’t going to volunteer his own story. There was nothing to it. His old life had been destroyed in the same way as everyone else’s. The Machines had come and killed the people he loved and had continued to do so from that day forth.

  CHAPTER 12

  THREE DROIDS STOOD TOGETHER IN THE MIDDLE OF the road.

  They had taken shelter in the nearest building. There had been a fire, but the structure was still sound. The blackened glass meant that they would be more difficult to see from outside.

  Samuel, Richard and Victoria crouched by the window and looked out.

  “What are they doing?” Lisa said. She was standing away from the window, but not as far back and Brett and Joanna.

  “Not a lot,” Victoria said. “Standing there.”

  “I say we take them out,” Richard said.

  Samuel was non-committal.

  When they’d first spotted the Droids, Samuel had taken Brett aside to ask his opinion. Which was why they were now in the building which none of them could tell the original purpose of.

  The danger was, Brett had told him, they might not be alone. If there were Buzzards in the area, then there would be trouble.

  “What do you think Brett?” Samuel said.

  Brett turned to Joanna, as if to excuse himself, and then walked towards the window to join them.

  The Droids didn’t seem to have moved since they’d arrived.

  “They look like they’re guarding something,” he said.

  “What would they be guarding?” Samuel said.

  “They’re not guarding anything,” Richard said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Brett ignored Richard. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “The pharmacy is on the other side of the hill,” Samuel said. “They might be guarding that?”

  “Maybe,” Brett said, although he privately doubted it. Machines had no need for drugs.

  “It could be a trap,” Victoria said.

  No one replied. They stared out the window and wondered what they were dealing with.

  “Well,” Samuel said, turning away from the window and straightening up. “The way I see it, we’ve got two options. Either we wait and hope they leave of their own accord, or we destroy them.”

  “I say we destroy them,” Richard said. No one else was quite so eager to respond.

  “Brett?” Samuel said.

  He considered the probability that they would get killed. It didn’t seem worth the risk. “Is there another way to the pharmacy?” he said.

  Samuel shook his head. “It’s right behind them. If we have to go around, it will take another day.”

  Another day in the wastelands of London hardly seemed like a good plan. He rubbed the back of his neck and found himself nodding. “Okay,” he said, delaying the inevitable for as long as possible. “I guess we don’t have a choice.”

  They were leaning towards him as if he was the leader of the group and what he was going to say was a direct order. It was an intoxicating reminder of his time in the Resistance. A time, he reminded himself, when he had lost everyone he’d cared about.

  “We need to attack them.”

  “Yes!” Richard said, clapping his hands together as if he’d won a prize. Brett wondered if his memory was so short that he’d forgotten about their last encounter with a Droid.

  Victoria, Lisa and Joanna didn’t look happy about going up against the Droids. Samuel chewed his lips, preparing to make the final decision.

  “Okay,” Samuel said. “We’ll flank them.” He pointed at himself, Richard, Lisa and Victoria. “Brett, you attack from the front.”

  He nodded, unsure whether he was being set up as bate, or if there was a chance the manoeuvre could work. He was the most capable of them, but that didn’t mean he could take out three Droids in a head-on assault by himself.

  “What about me?” Joanna said.

  “You know what drugs we need?” Samuel said.

  She nodded.

  “We’ll keep them busy, you go around. As soon as you’ve got what we need give the signal and we’ll come and get you. Any questions?” Samuel said.

  There were no questions.

  “Okay then…” Samuel trailed off. The order was a big one to give. He might be sending them all to their deaths, but there was no one else who could, or would, do it for him. “Let’s get on with it.”

  They filed towards the door, checking their Blasters for charge as they went. If they were going to give Lisa enough time to reach the pharmacy and get what they needed, then they would have to make the power last. Brett’s weapon was at one-hundred percent, but that would only give him a few minutes of continuous firing.

  He followed Samuel out into the night. It would just have to be enough.

  CHAPTER 13

  “BRETT?”

  HE TURNED TO LOOK AT HER AS he came out of the building. Joanna was standing with her back to the wall, attempting to merge with the bricks. “Are you okay?” he said. Richard, Lisa and Victoria walked past.

  “Yes,” she said and then shook her head. “I mean, no. I’m not sure.”

  Brett said nothing.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

  It seemed unlikely that there was anything relevant that she could say. So he didn’t ask.

  “This might…” she began but trailed off. He thought he could guess what she was going to say now.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “But— “

  Brett shook his head. “You’re going to be fine. We’re both going to be fine. Whatever you want to tell me can wait until we’re done. Understand?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes filled wi
th tears but she didn’t let them fall. Joanna nodded.

  “Is your weapon charged?” he said.

  She looked down at it and her expression showed her distaste for the device. He took her hand and brought it up so he could see the screen at the back. It showed a full charge. It also showed that it hadn’t been discharged in the last seven days. Whatever she had been doing during their last encounter with a Droid, it was not shooting.

  “They aren’t people,” Brett said. He let her hand go and her arm fell to her side. “If you need to shoot then shoot, okay?”

  Joanna nodded again, but he wasn’t convinced that she meant it. There wasn’t time to debate the issue now.

  “Good. Then it’s time to go.”

  She smiled as she looked at him and for the first time he looked at her.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “You too,” she said.

  They turned away and went to their respective positions.

  Brett watched the three Droids standing in front of him, less than thirty-metres away. He had hidden in a ditch, behind a pile of rubble, and it was dark, but he still felt exposed. It didn’t matter to Machines whether it was dark or not, they didn’t need special goggles to see through the night. c He couldn’t see the others, but he knew they were close.

  He listened but couldn’t hear anything except his own shallow breathing. Dust from the fallout blew in the breeze.

  The silence went on and on. He began to wonder whether they would need to fight at all. It was possible that Joanna could sneak past without the Droids noticing.

  “HALT, WHO GOES THERE?”

  With a sigh, Brett rose from the ground, stepped out of the shallow hole and turned to face the Machines.

  Their three identical voices overlapped, giving the impression that only one was speaking. “WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  Brett said nothing but stood in clear view of them. They would be scanning his face and accessing the Nexus, soon they would know exactly who he was.

  The process took less than five seconds. He could tell when they’d accessed the information on him because they raised their weapons.

  He didn’t wait for them to take the first shot.

  Brett raised his Blaster and squeezed the trigger. The pulse of electromagnetic energy struck the middle of the Droid. It staggered, glancing off the Machines either side of it, causing their shots to go wide.