A Man and His Robot

by William Vitka

  I run. Right up to Juliet. My footfalls so heavy they brush zombies aside.

  I flip open Alpha’s visor. Make it so Jack can see my face. Tell him: “Get Athena.”

  He nods. Opens the tank up. Athena crawls up my dad’s arm.

  She stands there in front of me. Sorta curious. Sorta proud at how big I am. She says, “Daddy!” She leans inside Alpha. Kisses me on the forehead.

  I say, “Everything’s gonna be all right. Do me a favor. Get the flag off the tank’s rear antennae.”

  She does. Says, “It’s stars and stripes. The old flag for America. Juliet and Plissken told me that.”

  “That’s right, monkey. Before it became the United States of Christ. Now you remember: This is what we’re fighting for. Not the flag. The idea. It means something.”

  She nods. She gets it.

  Monsters turned me into a tourist in my own fuckin city. Isolated me in New York. Now I’m out. In a country full of the same cocksuckers.

  I am the goddamn revolution.

  Delusions of grandeur!

  Athena holds Old Glory. Says, “Are you going to kill the monsters now, Daddy?”

  “Yes I am.” I curl Alpha-Jade’s fingers around Athena’s cheek.

  My little girl smiles.

  Jade screams. “Left. Now!”

  Jack’s faster than me.

  He turns. Just a tiny bit. Fires his Colt. The .45 bullet soars. Rams into the skull of a charging stilt-walker. Its legs go slack. The body of the thing skids to a halt a few feet from Juliet.

  Jack smirks.

  I say, “How’d you do that?”

  Jack says, “It’s kinda my thing.” He scoops Athena up and puts her back inside the tank. She waves goodbye before Jack shuts the hatch. He says, “Now go do your thing. There’s still a few hundred of these assholes left, Mr. Roboto.”

  I look down. Lovelace and Turing both bounce back and forth. Fighters in the ring. Eager.

  Plissken floats above em. His plasma turret charged. He says, “What’s the plan?”

  I say, “Fuck plans. Murderboners for everyone.”

  Turing and Lovelace stare up at me, a blinking ? on their screens.

  I strut out beyond the tank. Another stilt-walker rushes in. Sings out its weird howl. It jumps. Wants to put spear-like limbs through Alpha’s chest.

  I punch its face so hard the whole head explodes in a shower of gore.

  I run like a psychopath.

  You’ve kinda always been a psychopath.

  I stomp and kick and crush my way through the horde. My footsteps leave craters in the ground. They fill with blood. Dark pools shimmering with reflections of heavy combat.

  A zombie crawls up my leg. Might’ve been a cop once. He digs his fingers into the seams between the slats of Alpha’s armor. Tries to bite. Shatters all the teeth in his dipshit mouth.

  I grab him by his face. “Idiot.” I yank his chest and torso in different directions till his body pops in half and use him to beat a few more zombies to redeath. His abdomen comes apart on me. Putrefied flesh splashes across Alpha’s visor. Some sticks but I barely notice thanks to the machine’s optics.

  I tell Jade, “You’re gonna need a wash when this is done.”

  “Mmm. A bikini car wash. Mmmmm.” She giggles.

  It’s creepy.

  She says, “It’s not creepy. It’s endearing, because I’m a little sexpot.”

  Her hologram does a dance on the command console. There’s a lotta pelvic thrusting and boob jiggling involved.

  I hear DeVille say, “Jade, don’t forget your mother’s here.”

  I’m reminded again that none of this shit’s private anymore. At all.

  Oooh, sociopolitical commentary!

  Plissken streaks through the shambling undead at head level. Spinning blades on his sides slice the tops of their domes off. Skullcaps pop. It takes some of the Keefs a few moments to realize they’re kaput. I watch their legs jostle along till they fall over.

  It’s impressive. My former library drone scythes his way through the monster field.

  The robo twins are more impressive though.

  Cuz they’re so damn fast.

  They work in tandem. Shoulder to shoulder.

  Lovelace throws her arms out. Brings up her dual 20mm cannons. It’s all thunder. She blows the legs off an approaching flesh-tower. It crumples. Pulls itself along with arms that carry a dozen distorted faces.

  Turing stays by her. He slashes apart zombies and stilt-walkers that approach with his lightsabers.

  They cover each other. Just the way a brother and sister should. Neither one’s looking for glory. They both just want to murder these things.

  The why of that, only Plissken knows. It’s his programming.

  Jack and Catarina and the twins can handle the zombie pests. Me—I want a bigger score.

  There’s a trio of twenty-foot tall flesh-towers that look like a good place to start.

  I’m like an unbalanced weak kid with a gun now. A school shooting waiting to happen.

  Well, that’s sure to piss someone off.

  The flesh-towers notice me. Look a little surprised by my size. This big tall human-shaped thing. All the faces that make up their horrible bodies scream. And scream. And scream.

  I pull the Fiske kinetic impact rifle off my back. Shoulder it. Let Alpha-Jade’s aimbot software tell me when to shoot. Two targeting reticles snap together on the machine’s visor. Flash red. Right over the closest one’s head.

  I pull the trigger.

  The gun kicks. Hard. I see Alpha’s gyro readings freak out for a second.

  A massive conical shockwave explodes out in front of me. Zombies nearby burst from the change in air pressure.

  The fat shell casing flies out the gun’s side. It hisses when it touches the cold ground.

  The scooped bullet hits the flesh-tower with so much kinetic energy that its head and chest stop existing. Like, they’re gone. They splash backward in a spray. Liquefied. The shockwave from the bullet tears all the screaming faces off.

  I laugh. Can’t help it.

  Shit’s hilarious.

  Jade says, “Brainwave patterns indicate that you seem to have the same physical response to killing that you do to an orgasm.”

  I say, “Yeah. Whatever. That is stupid awesome.”

  The other two flesh-towers lumber toward me.

  Open mouths shriek. Dozens of eyes stare.

  I put the Annihilator on my back. Bring up my fists. Shout, “Giant monster fight!”

  Jack and Catarina both bark through my earpiece: “We’ve done that before. Doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.”

  Pft. Parents.

  Jade says, “I know, right, like...OMG.”

  DeVille says, “For fuck’s sake, Jade.”

  The flesh-towers ain’t tactical. They go after me together. No planning.

  Not like I plan much either.

  I dig my heels in. Pivot back. Dodge a big meaty fist of meat.

  The first flesh-tower overreaches. Can’t recover in time.

  I send a right uppercut into its abdomen. Where someone’s sternum would be. Bring my left fist around and haymaker its jaw. Infected bone breaks. Tears. Slops into a mound on the ground.

  The second flesh-tower grabs my shoulder. I turn against its arm. Spin fast enough to snap the hand clean off at the wrist. I get in its face. Bring my palms together. Clap the sides of its skull. Crush the whole thing into a gory pancake. Three big eyes pop out and smear Alpha-Jade’s visor.

  I burn it while it stumbles and tumbles. Use the same laser that severed my spine to turn the second flesh-tower into a charred heap of once-human maws. Their howls shudder across high and low frequencies. A song being sped up and slowed down. Now all of em are st
uck looking like they’re screaming without a voice.

  The other Flesh Tower roars behind me. Punches me in the back.

  Alpha’s gyros go crazy. But I don’t fall. I roll forward. Come back up in a boxing stance. I bark. “You asshole.”

  The hulking flesh fucker runs at me.

  So I run at it. Not thinking. Acting. Screaming.

  I come up under another wide swing. Put my hand around its throat. Lift it into the air. Slam it into the dirt. Create a new dent in the earth.

  I hold the monster there. Its fat legs kick out. It whacks me in the side of the head. Jade tells me to stop screwing around. Tells me to watch those hits. Strong as the armor is on Alpha, these gargantuan pigfuckers punch hard. We don’t wanna be stuck doing repairs.

  I hear her but I’m not really listening.

  I wanna squeeze the life outta this amalgamation of parasite people. I wanna choke it till it doesn’t move. Slow. I wanna smash its face. Then take all its arms off. Then beat other beasts to redeath with those limbs.

  I say, “Dirty bitch hit me in the back.”

  Jade says, “Dirty bitch hit us in the back.”

  I tighten my grip.

  The Flesh Tower tries to bite Alpha’s armored fingers with what remains of its jaw.

  I close my grip.

  Ropes of veins burst out. All those infected bodily fluids under pressure. Then the head spurts. Squirts a load of blood. The only thing connecting it to the rest of the body is a floppy length of trachea.

  I tear it off. Stand. Spike the skull. “Hooah!”

  Jade’s still talking. I’m still not listening.

  Till the cockpit turns red. Starts blaring proximity warning messages at me.

  I shake my head. “Proximity warning? There a ship nearby?”

  Jade says, “You are a dumb dick. That thing is here. The walking city?”

  “I’m allowed to have some fun with my job.”

  A giant tentacle slaps the shit outta me.

  Us.

  We caterwaul through the air. End over end. Alpha’s frame carves a trough across the landscape. Through dirt and bodies then asphalt and vehicles. We come to a dead stop against the rusting hulk of an SUV in the Sikorsky parking lot.

  I glance at Alpha’s armor status—CARBYNE1: 37%.

  Jade says, “That’s the first layer of three, but don’t get hit like that again. Impact plus being tossed two hundred feet and skidding for another fifty scraped a lot off.”

  “Noted.”

  I watch downtown White Plains walk over the hill of the golf course. A dark wriggling shape silhouetted against the night sky. Two square blocks of biological hell that struts on ten fat tentacles. Alpha’s optics show me meat flowers growing from twenty-story building tops. Carpets of tentacles where the streets were. Mouths the size of Buicks that chew and moan.

  The infection is using the infrastructure as a shell to hide behind. A megaparasite that’s taken a hint from the hermit crab.

  Sneaky fuck.

  I stare at the mouths.

  They cry.

  For me.

  At least it ain’t Newark. That mother was a lot bigger.

  But Newark knew your name...

  I’m imagining things.

  Jade says, “No, you’re not.”

  DeVille’s drones swarm the nightmare titan. Triangle-shaped death machines pound the slithering limbs with missiles. A dozen fires break out along the walking city’s surface. An office building gets hit. Explodes outward. It bleeds strands of infected flesh. Shit looks like a horror-pasta spilled from a cracked bowl.

  The megaparasite’s noodles whip around in the air. Frenzied. Exposed. They burrow back into the shattered structure. Then up. They erupt from the petals of a meat-flower. Tie themselves around the nearest drones. Drag the poor bots into a bloody embrace.

  The drones don’t go quiet.

  They send a universal kill order to themselves. Detonate. Tear apart meat-flowers and chunks of street and the corners of towers. Fragments of their metal hulls pitter patter when they fall.

  I hear DeVille groan over the radio.

  She spins her chopper around. Goes hard as a motherfucker toward the dead city of White Plains. She strafes. Opens up with missiles and cannons. Her gunship howls fire and smoke.

  She manages to blow off one of the megaparasite’s legs.

  It stops. Growls. The stump leaks ichor. One of its mouths unleashes a fat tongue that licks up gore from the wound. Big diseased lips suck on it.

  I hear Jack on the radio: “Cowgirl, fall back to the tank. Forget the deadheads.”

  Juliet’s 260mm gun thunders. Shells hammer the frontmost building. Looks like some squat goddamn government office with a hungry vagina wagging out. Ballistics make it chowder.

  Which’s great and all, but it doesn’t mean dick unless we can take out the brain.

  Catarina rushes to Jack. She cuts a path of brutal violence that leaves eyes and heads and limbs behind. She ducks under the sharp arachnid leg of a parasite using a car as a shell. Cuts the limb off. Jumps onto the hood of the car. Then soars through the air and lands on the tank.

  Another barrage of plasma and high-caliber shells from Juliet chops off another megaparasite tentacle. But at this rate, we’ll be getting digested in its stomach before we stop it.

  All these people on the ground. They’re distractions. For me and the monsters.

  I need em gone so I can focus. I need em gone so I’m not worrying about Athena.

  The girl’s gotta get to Boston. Gotta let Caleb look at her.

  Maybe we can weaponize the blood or something...

  My tasty, tasty blood.

  I key my radio. Tell Jack and Catarina: “You guys have to get out of here. You have to get Athena to Boston. Take the tank and roll.”

  I don’t hear anything back for a minute.

  Catarina finally responds. Says, “We’re not leaving you again.”

  “You also said fight now, cry later. Get Athena to Boston. I’ll meet you there.”

  Another moment of silence. Jack says, “He’s right, Cat.”

  Catarina says to me: “Put that abomination down for good, kiddo.”

  Jack says, “We’ll see you in Beantown.”

  The tank builds up some speed. Tears across the parking lot. It runs over dead cars and Keefs.

  A hellbaby lopes after Juliet. I grab it by its spindly limbs. Spin it in the air like a dirty sock. Slam its three horrible child-torsos into the ground with enough force that they all pop.

  I shout over the radio to DeVille and the bots: “All right folks. I got me one of those ‘plans’ I’ve heard so much about.”

  22. A Stroll Through Walking Deadtown

  The megaparasite is titanic. So I figure: We’ll scale the sonuvabitch. Infiltrate. I figure: The best way to get to the brain is from the inside out. Then I can actually punch the thing to death with my big metal fists.

  I wanna do that so bad.

  DeVille keeps watch overhead. Circles the walking deadtown. Hammers it with gunfire and missiles to weaken it.

  Tentacles lash out at her. Some of em a couple hundred feet long. Only reason they don’t take Flygirl out is cuz the helicopter blades are harder than they are. They get chewed up by the rotors.

  Doesn’t seem to dampen their drive to get her, though.

  She leads it toward Sikorsky. Says over the radio, “I’m running out of ordnance. But if I can get it closer to the turrets, maybe that’ll help.”

  Jade says, “I wouldn’t hold my breath. The turrets aren’t firing a high enough caliber.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I watch DeVille back the gunship up. A carrot on a stick for the megaparasite.

  It lashes at her again.

  I
run for the nearest leg. Juke as a tentacle comes crashing down near me. Almost on top of me. I pull the impact rifle. Aim up. Shoot to tear out chunks of the big chitinous appendages so I can grab into the leaky holes and hoist myself up.

  This does not make the megaparasite happy. It thrashes. Howls.

  I jump for the first blown-out monster meat hole. Grab there while goo drips. Look for another spot to leap to.

  Plissken, Lovelace and Turing move along the tentacle next to me.

  We try to cover each other.

  A tendril goes for Plissken.

  Turing leaps. Cuts it outta the air with an energy sword. Lands back on the leg.

  I set fire to another nightmare noodle with the pulse laser in my head.

  Your head?

  I tell the bots: “You’re faster than I am. Get up there. Secure an area for us.”

  They scurry. Hop up the megaparasite’s legs like fleas. The bound up and up. Cover the hundred foot climb in no time. Their indicators flash on the cockpit holoscreens when they get to the top.

  There’s a lotta gunfire.

  “Okay, momma. Let’s do this.”

  DeVille says, “I hope you’re not talking to me.”

  Jade says, “Or me.”

  I ignore em both. Start punching handholds into the leg I’m on. It’s slow. But it’s solid. And soon I’ve got a meat ladder to march up.

  Plissken says to me, “Things are horrible and different up here. Hurry.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  A pale-pink torso tumbles through the air next to me. It’s missing its head. As well as its arms and legs. All I see are ragged stumps.

  “Uhh...”

  Plissken says, “I said things were different. Less talking, more walking please.”

  Now he’s sounding like me.

  I push myself. Push Jade. Climb climb climb.

  Then, yeah, it gets weirder.

  The streets are paved with flesh. Squishy and obscene between the cracks of asphalt. Everything moves. Everything pulses. It’s a brand new concrete jungle. One that’s alive and angry.

  There’s red grass that wriggles in a non-existent wind.

  Trees with faces that moan and cry at the sky.

  Even the air has a dirty hue.

  Natives ain’t so great, either. The pale pink things. I can see em wobbling around the buildings down the street. I don’t think they have eyes. They look like taffy in a vaguely human form stretched to ten feet. The arms and legs and head are bundles of tendrils. White blood cells writ large.