Metal

by Thomas Hall

  Brett kicked one. It weighed a ton so it didn’t move much, but it rocked a little and then fell still. He did the same with the other and told himself that it was as much proof as he was going to get. There was no reason to believe that the Blasters didn’t work on them. They had already destroyed one of them that way and, if these two were still operational, then that meant...

  He looked up. There was nothing. Brett shook his head and told himself that he was being stupid. If the Machines were going to attack again then it would have happened already.

  CHAPTER 21

  NONE OF THEM SAID IT, BUT THEY ALL felt the same sense of fear about the world around them. Once they were out of the narrow path beside the river they had nothing to hide behind. Anyone who was looking would be able to see them.

  As the sun began to set Brett felt the pressure easing. The darkness was like a shield. Even if it wasn’t an effective one, it made him feel better and that counted for something. Even if it was a false sense of security, it was still useful.

  None of them spoke. They were exhausted. Brett tried to remember the last time they had slept. It would make them slow and sloppy and that was dangerous. He didn’t want to get so close to their destination and start losing people now.

  To compensate, he tried to be extra vigilant. Which wasn’t easy because he was also close to exhausted. But he scanned the streets and looked for movement. He didn’t see anything until the night was starting to get cold and by then it was almost too late.

  He couldn’t tell whether it was a Droid or something else. His mind churned with the possibilities. No one else had noticed it. They kept moving forwards, even as his mouth opened and closed, trying to find the words to warn them.

  The first blast took out a wall on the other side of the street and that was enough to break his silence, but it came too late.

  “Get down!” he shouted, but that wasn’t what he meant. They couldn’t defend themselves from the ground, with nothing to shelter behind. What he should have done was order them into the nearest building.

  He watched them throw themselves to the ground but didn’t follow. Brett turned and ran across the road. He dived into an old shop as a blast of energy, hot enough to scorch the hairs on his arm, landed inches behind him. It blew a hole in the ground that was several feet across.

  He stopped when he realised what he had done. His first instinct was to go back out and join them, then to call them over to join him. But when he saw what was out there, he realised that doing so was likely to get him killed.

  Brett closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. It seemed as if there was nothing he could do for them. The only choice was to save himself.

  The old Brett would have done exactly that, as he had done with Dina and the others back at the department store. He had left them to die.

  He looked back and saw the Droids coming down the street. There were dozens of them. Dozens of droids wouldn’t have been a problem, if it wasn’t for what he saw at the front of the pack. The spiky headed Machine was leading them.

  Brett tried to remember another time when he had seen an army of Droids with a leader. That wasn’t how they operated. In all the time he had been fighting them, he had only ever seen them working as a co-operative. Their orders and instructions seeming to come from far away. There was no mistaking what he was seeing though. The spiky headed Machine walked at the front of the pack and the others following several steps behind.

  His friends started to shoot, but they had no cover and the Droid seemed to realise it. It didn’t open fire, but continued to walk towards them, the Blaster shots had no effect on it.

  “Shit!” Brett muttered to himself. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He was going to have to watch them get killed, or worse.

  He looked down at his Blaster and saw that he had less than seventy percent charge. It wasn’t much, but it was likely more than the rest of them had. He rubbed his face and tried to decide what to do.

  If he’d been the one carrying the medicine, then he might have left them. He would never know. But one of them was carrying it and if he left now then it would never get delivered. They would die for nothing.

  He cursed Samuel for forcing him to go on the mission. He cursed himself for agreeing to it. He cursed everything he could think of but it didn’t do anything to change the situation.

  It all boiled down to a simple question: was he prepared to do nothing while his friends died?

  He’d learned to live with his actions once before, but he had a feeling that doing so again would break him. He couldn’t turn his back on them now, he couldn’t do it.

  CHAPTER 22

  BRETT GOT TO THE DOOR AND CLAMPED HOLD of the door frame. He forced himself to let go.

  He took a tentative step forwards and pulled his Blaster out at the same time. He raised his weapon and aimed it at the corrupted Machine which was advancing at the front of the pack. It was a clean shot, he squeezed the trigger and held his breath. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the Machine recoiled backwards and hit the ground hard enough to blow up dust.

  Brett waited to see what effect it would have on the rest of the Machines. His secret hope was that they, while not being part of the Nexus, would still have a link to the corrupted Droid. That they would fall alongside it. But nothing happened. Worse than that, after a few moments, the corrupted Droid stood up. Brett realised that the Blasters weren’t going to work.

  He looked at the others. There was relief in their expressions. Either they hadn’t seen what had happened, or they didn’t understand. Brett was now sure that none of them were going to make it back to the tunnel, that their entire mission had been a failure.

  The Droids continued to march towards them. Brett heard the dreadful buzzing sound that told him the Drones were coming. If they had any hope at all, it was to run as far and as fast as they could.

  “To me!” he shouted.

  They looked at him but didn’t move.

  “To me!” he shouted.

  Joanna came first. She broke away from them and Richard grabbed for her to try and pull her back. Brett edged forwards, as if reaching him would mean she was safe.

  She ran over the battleground and two of the Droids turned to watch her. It seemed to happen in slow motion; they raised their weapons and started shooting.

  Brett shouted again.

  They didn’t hear him over the sound of the guns and explosions.

  When she was a few metres away a shot skimmed her shoulder. She cried out in pain but didn’t stop moving. She threw herself towards him and landed a few inches away.

  Brett glanced at the Droids and then went to her, dragging her across the ground towards his hiding place. He turned her over and saw that she was still breathing.

  “What’s the plan?” she said.

  Brett smiled.

  The rest of them came in a group. They had the sense to shoot at the Machines while they ran, but not one of them managed to hit anything.

  They besieged him with questions:

  “What now?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “How are we going to get past them?”

  All Brett could do was shake his head.

  If he knew how to get them out of this then they would already be on their way. The only thing he knew was that they stood a better chance if they were all together. And, although he didn’t tell them so, if they were going to die, this time he was going to die with them.

  The buzzing got louder.

  He started walking and they followed him. When he started to run, they did that as well.

  The Droids came after them. They moved quickly and would never get tired.

  Brett took them down narrow streets. Past buildings that seemed a stiff breeze away from collapsing. The buzzing followed them. The Droids weren’t far behind.

  Joanna and Samuel were already tiring and Brett could feel the exhaustion creeping up on him as well.

  “Slow down!” Joanna panted.

  H
e glanced back. Sweat was streaming down her face. She looked as if she was on the verge of collapse.

  Brett would have preferred to keep going. But he had gone back for them so they would all stand together. That included the weakest and the slowest members of the group.

  They had spread out over a few metres, with only Victoria able to keep pace with him. He stopped and she kept going for a few more metres before realising she was on her own and coming back to them.

  “Well this is as good a place as any,” Brett said. He looked around at the crumbling buildings. There were stone walls that they could hide behind, but the houses looked as if they would be more of a hazard than a help. There was a bridge behind them which had collapsed in the middle.

  “What’s the plan?” Samuel said when he reached them.

  Brett ordered them to pair up and sent them each to a different place where they could get some shelter. He did his best to team the people who he thought could shoot with those who couldn’t, which left him with Joanna.

  They crouched behind a low brick wall. He could feel her beside him but she didn’t speak. They watched the road until the first Droids appeared.

  Brett closed his eyes and all he could see was Dina’s face. Would she have let him go, if she’d known that he would end up taking more people down with him? Would it have saved five lives if he had never shown up in the tunnels?

  When he could no longer stand to think about her, he opened his eyes and turned to face the Droids.

  There seemed to be hundreds of them now. They swarmed through the streets like insects.

  He said a prayer and squeezed the trigger of his Blaster. Then all hell broke loose.

  Droids fell and they didn’t get back up. The air filled with smoke and the smell of burned electronic components. Brett kept squeezing the trigger of his Blaster and more of them fell.

  The bodies piled up and it seemed as if they were going to win. The few shots that the Machines could fire sailed well over their heads or landed a few metres in front of them.

  When his Blaster started to run low, he started throwing stones at the Droids until he felt Joanna touch his arm. He turned to look at her and she was holding out her Blaster.

  He nodded at her, took it and returned to shooting the Droids as they filed through the streets towards them.

  It took less than ten minutes to stop the Droids from advancing. The bodies of the fallen created a barrier that stopped more of them getting through.

  Brett got up and waited to see if they were going to shoot him. When they didn’t, he turned to Joanna and offered his hand.

  They joined the rest of the group and started walking.

  Brett listened to them talking and laughing and celebrating their victory. He knew that it wasn’t over yet. They still had to get back to the underground. The spiky headed machine was still out there somewhere.

  CHAPTER 23

  THEY WALKED THROUGH THE NIGHT AND INTO THE next morning. The sun had began to rise and the air felt electric. There were a few buildings that would make a decent shelter. If they got inside they could rest and recover and that seemed like a good idea to him. But they were close enough to go on.

  The best he could do to keep them safe was to stay in the shadows. It had been long enough since the last fight that his Blaster had almost fully recharged, but he wasn’t anxious to use it. He would have preferred to make it back without a fight. But it soon became clear that he didn’t have a choice.

  The spikey headed Droid stood alone in the street. There was no sign of any other Machines but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  He held up a hand and they stopped behind him.

  For a while he watched the Droid. It seemed inactive, but after a while it turned towards him and its eyes lit up.

  “I SEE YOU,” the Droid said. It’s cold, mechanical voice, made Brett shiver. “ARE YOU GOING TO FACE ME?”

  Brett raised his Blaster. He had no intention of having a conversation with the Machine.

  “YOU CAN DESTROY ME, BUT I WILL KEEP COMING,” the droid said. “YOU CANNOT STOP PROGRESS.”

  I can try, Brett thought.

  He started to squeeze the trigger, but before he could fire a single shot, the Machine began to jerk wildly. He turned and saw the others. They had their Blasters raised, their faces set in grim determination.

  They fired until the lights went out in the Droid’s eyes. When they stopped it fell to the ground like so much useless scrap metal. Brett looked down at the screen on his Blaster and saw that he hadn’t fired a single shot.

  He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  Although he hadn’t realised it, he saw now that he wasn’t the only one who had changed. The five people who had come with him had started off unwilling to fight and unable to see the need. At some point that had all changed.

  “Come on,” Samuel said. “We’re almost back. Let’s keep moving.”

  Brett fell in behind Samuel and together they walked the final mile and a half to their station. There wasn’t much to say to one another, but it seemed they didn’t need to say anything. The feeling of camaraderie was familiar to him from his time in the Resistance. Until that moment, he hadn’t realised how much he had missed it.

  CHAPTER 24

  BRETT SAT WITH HIS BACK AGAINST THE CURVED wall. He pulled his hood up and hoped that he would be able to get warm soon. Since they had returned to the tunnel he hadn’t seen Samuel, Richard, Joanna, Victoria or Lisa. He wasn’t sure where they had gone, but they hadn’t come to see him.

  He could hear a child laughing and tried to remember who it belonged to. There were voices muttering some distance from him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He tried to hold onto the feeling that things were different now. That he was different now, but as the hours passed he began to wonder whether he was kidding himself.

  The darkness felt oppressive. The lights that had been strung along the walls did little to change that. The movement that he could see was distant and shadowy. He began to wonder whether he had made a mistake in coming back. It was possible that his future was elsewhere.

  After a time he laid down on his blankets. The smell of them brought him comfort, but he needed more than that now. Although his position within the group hadn’t changed, he had. He was no longer satisfied to live the life of a ghost.

  He didn’t realise that he had fallen asleep until the sound of footsteps woke up.

  Brett looked up and saw Samuel standing above him.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Samuel said.

  “I’m right here,” Brett said. He sat up and wiped the sleep from his face.

  “Come with me, we need to talk.”

  Brett pushed himself off the ground and followed Brett. The tunnel was quiet now, most of the group had fallen asleep. There were a few whispered conversations, but most of the people he saw were bundles of blankets and rags.

  Samuel led him into the small office where he had first invited Brett to join them on their mission. It seemed even smaller now, but Samuel closed the door and they both sat down.

  “She’s going to be okay,” Samuel said.

  Brett looked at him and for a moment he didn’t know what Samuel was talking about.

  “The antibiotics look like they’re going to work.”

  “That’s good,” Brett said.

  “It is. I owe you an apology,” Samuel said.

  “You don’t owe--“

  “I do,” Samuel said. “I lied to you and it wasn’t fair. No one here cares that you used to be in the Resistance.”

  Brett nodded.

  “And because you were right.”

  “Right?”

  “We do need training.”

  “It’s okay,” Brett said. “You aren’t fighters.”

  “No, we’re not,” agreed Samuel. “And I don’t want you to build an army. But we need to learn how to defend ourselves. You were right about that. What if we need to go to the surface ag
ain?”

  “I’ll go,” Brett said. “Next time I’ll go alone.”

  “And the time after that?”

  He nodded, caught up in the fact that he was now arguing against the very thing he had asked for.

  “What if they find us down here? What if something happens to you?”

  Brett had no answer to that.

  “Train the five of us to start with,” Samuel said. “See how it goes.”

  Brett realised that he was nodding. The sense of disappointment he had felt since they’d arrived back was gone. Perhaps all he’d ever needed was a cause, a purpose. Now he had one.

  “And for god’s sake, move in with the rest of us. You’ll die of cold if you keep sleeping all the way back there.”

  Brett smiled, despite himself. At no time since leaving the Resistance had he felt more at home and more accepted. He didn’t know what the future had in store for any of them. How long they would be able to continue hiding in the tunnels while the last of humanity fought for survival above. However long it turned out to be, he was glad to be doing it amongst friends.

  “You’ve got a deal,” Brett said.

  Samuel stood first and they shook hands. They had been through so much together and this, Brett realised, was only the start.

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  About the Author

  Thomas Hall is really James Loscombe in disguise.