Knuckleduster

by Andrew Post

  The three words stirred their hearer. “Sure, the largest hospital in Cairo taken over by revolutionaries, a suicide bomber standing watch in the children’s burn unit wing while another sat beside an innocent woman who was being kept alive by machines. Good times.”

  It took a lot to slather some sarcasm across the recollections of that particular day. He now knew what Thorp meant, though. Hearing “Commando” at top volume, sitting strapped into a seat. The Darter passing over the city, eating up the distance from the base to the hospital in seconds—seconds Brody begged to double, triple. Setting down on the hospital helipad, rushing because never would they think to post a man on the roof—they were all on the ground floor, watching the lobby, using the nurses’ kiosk as a makeshift foxhole.

  Thorp jolted Brody from the memory by speaking over the song. “It worked.”

  “Yeah,” Brody admitted. “They never saw us coming.” He got it. He glanced at Thorp, who raised his eyebrows.

  “We have an idea that Titian is working for Hark, but like you said, we need hard evidence. We know they’re only watching the bottom floors closely. It’s an idea. And there are no bad ideas in the planning phase when thinking about stopping the bad guys.”

  “True,” Brody said, “but we’re not planning anything.”

  “I’m just spitballing here.”

  “You’re talking about hijacking,” Brody said, screwing the lid on the lens charger and withdrawing the sonar, “because there sure as hell ain’t any way we’re going to get a pilot to take us to the Hark Telecom roof voluntarily. And if you remember, a whole lot of what the bad guys did involved schemes very similar to that one.”

  Thorp shrugged, broke eye contact with the road long enough to run his finger over the touch pad to find the next song that suited his mood. “All I’m saying is that you can’t deny the fact it worked. We’ll do what you think is best, but that’s all I’m saying. Direct access to whatever Hubert Ward has on his hard drive might be useful and—”

  Brody glanced at Thorp and noticed he was looking ahead about half as often as in the rearview mirror. Some more textures bled into Thorp’s face, and Brody could detect that he was squinting. “What’s going on?” he asked over the wind roaring through the car.

  Thorp didn’t respond.

  Brody turned around in the passenger seat and looked, even though there was little to spy because the rear windscreen was still intact. He listened instead. He could hear the engine noises, the Fairlane’s wheels crushing snow under its tires, but beyond that … the sound of another engine, a bigger one. He spun around to face the car’s touch screen. “The tracker. We never turned it off.”

  Thorp freed one hand from the wheel to swipe through the car’s menu, found the tracker option, and turned it off.

  “What a relief,” Brody scoffed. “He’ll never find us now.”

  Thorp ignored the remark and removed the Franklin-Johann from Brody’s coat pocket. He attempted to eject the magazine to check it, even going so far as to thumb the button three and four times in rapid succession. But Brody kept the gun unloaded. Eyes on the road, gun, road. “I’m going to need bullets, man.”

  “Give me a second.” Brody took out the magazine and handed it over.

  In a daring move, Thorp took both hands from the wheel and reloaded the gun with a clatter. He engaged the safety and set it on the seat between them but kept a hand upon it.

  Twisting in his seat, Brody listened to their pursuer’s engine get louder and louder, the vehicle giving all it had to eat up the distance between them.

  “Can’t this piece of shit go any faster?” Thorp shouted, giving the wheel a series of openhanded strikes.

  In a moment, the Zäh punched through the sheet of falling snow and was on them, bumpers colliding. The closely trailing vehicle eased off a few yards and then lurched forward again, the bumpers hitting a second time with a shriek of buckling metal.

  The Fairlane was rushed forward, the front wheels momentarily losing traction. A tiny bark of friction sounded when the Fairlane found bare asphalt beneath the snow and dug at it. The other side was still in the slick stuff, and the steering wheel was violently kicked against Thorp’s hands.

  Brody shouted, “Shoot at him or something!”

  Thorp shoved the handgun at him. “I’m trying to keep us on the road. You shoot.”

  Three reports came just as the last word left his lips, the glass collapsing into the car into the backseat. Through the new opening, Brody watched in horror as the sonar painted the Zäh into the diorama. It was rudimentary in shape, as blocky as a bad special effect, but altogether terrifying knowing who was driving. Brody was frozen this way, literally caught in the headlights he couldn’t actually see.

  When the bumpers collided again, Thorp snatched the gun from Brody, rolled down the side window, and fired backwards, gouging out one of the Zäh’s headlights.

  The plastic wrap mask that the Fairlane wore gave way without warning. It became a twisting, shining braid and detached, soaring into the snowstorm’s winds. Wind and ice kicked freely into the car once more. Brody raised a hand to divert some of its bites, but it did little good. He turned his face away from it, the sonar’s ping finding its way into the Zäh, since one of the windows was being rolled down. In polygon, he saw Seb reloading his weapon with one hand on the wheel.

  “Now,” Brody urged.

  Thorp fired and the Zäh reacted at once: the front end wiggled.

  Seb angled his body up into the open window. Another volley of shots into the Fairlane.

  There was a solid punch against Brody’s spine, a slug striking his seat. He touched his back and felt no blood, no warm ache. But now, added to the snow blowing freely and tearing about within the car, came the toxic stench of melting foam.

  Thorp glanced around. “There’s a curve coming up. I’ve got to slow down.” Again, he tried giving the gun to Brody. When he didn’t take it, Thorp merely let it drop, his hand racing back to the wheel.

  The crook in the road came up, and Thorp tapped the brake. The move had been miscalculated and they lost too much speed, nearly coming to a full halt in the outermost portion of the curve.

  Seb barreled up on them. All Brody saw was the vehicle’s grille slam into them.

  The impact sent the Fairlane into a spin. They were on the road for a few more seconds before flying through the ditch to the other side. By momentum alone, the Fairlane crossed the field, easing into a slow crawl—the engine clunking and wheezing. Thorp stomped the gas, but the car didn’t kick ahead along the snow-covered dirt. The engine didn’t respond.

  Brody heard the click of the dashboard monitor dying, that muffled pop akin to a lightbulb filament throwing in the towel, as well as the series of small clinks as the instrument panel’s needles dropped back to zero.

  And lastly, a metallic cough sputtered and spat steam, belching up and around the lip of the hood—the Fairlane’s final white flag.

  26

  Out on the road, the one-eyed Zäh executed an awkward four-point turn. Once aimed in their direction, it carefully dipped into the ditch and came up on the other side with just a small grunt of acceleration.

  “We have to kill him,” Thorp said. “There’s no way around it.”

  “Let me see if I can talk to him,” Brody said.

  “He was shooting at us not even a minute ago. Do you really think he’s going to have a chat?”

  The sport utility vehicle edged closer, crunching over frozen dirt.

  “I have to try,” Brody said. “I mean, we’re kind of in a spot here.”

  “He’s not going to let us go,” Thorp pressed. “Don’t get out.”

  Brody opened the Fairlane’s door, the metal creaking. He presented his bare hands as he stepped into the path of the slowly approaching Zäh.

  The engine died. Seb got out. His breath wisped about his large head as he began laughing. He put his hand on the steaming hood of his friend’s vehicle and said, “Look at this.”


  “Just let us go,” Brody said. “We’re in the middle of something here. Something big.”

  Seb drew a simple black handgun and looked at it as if he were sharing a wordless inside joke with the firearm, then took a step forward. “So you think murdering my best friend, robbing me, stealing my car—all of that is small change to you? Not worth your time? Me and him went way back, you know. Way back.”

  “All right, I get it, but—”

  “Why don’t we get him out here?” Seb rumbled. He called to the Fairlane, “Hey, baldy. Yeah, you trigger-happy motherfucker, come on out. I want a word.”

  Brody sighed. “How’d you do it?”

  “What’s that?” Seb said.

  “Find us.”

  Seb grinned, stuffed a hand inside his coat, and came out with another phone identical to the one he had given Brody at the cubie apartments. “Burner phone, baby. Never leave home without it.”

  Thorp approached with his arms held out, the gun in his grip—his eye centered over the sights. “Drop it.”

  Seb snickered. “No. You drop it.” He glanced at Brody. “Where’d you find this piece of shit, anyway?”

  Brody kept his hands raised. “Thorp, come on. Put it down.” He noticed he had the rucksack on his back, both his and Alton’s ordis sandwiched together and bound with a bungee cord dangling from his side. “Give him something and maybe he’ll let us off the hook.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Seb said. “You ain’t giving me nothing, and you ain’t buying your way past me. This is Illinois we’re in. And we have a little thing called the you-fuck-me-I-fuck-you clause that goes exactly as it sounds. So, I’ll tell you again, killer. Drop the gun, your bag of goodies, and get down on your knees.”

  Thorp kept the Franklin-Johann trained on Seb. “No.”

  “I don’t remember asking,” Seb said. He got half a step toward Thorp before he seemed to change his mind. While staring at Thorp, he pointed his gun at Brody.

  “Shit. Do what he says. Just put the bag down.”

  “He deserved it,” Thorp said. “Your friend.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Spanky, or whatever his real name was. He deserved it.”

  Seb’s forehead collapsed in a profound display of stupefied disbelief. “Are you really saying this to me when I have your friend on the business end of this thing?” He kept his gaze trained on Thorp, sidestepping closer to Brody.

  Brody watched the barrel of Seb’s gun, a perfect black circle, widen by a few more degrees as it approached his face.

  “You care to elaborate on how you came to this conclusion about my friend of thirty-two goddamn years?”

  “Thorp.”

  “When I was in his truck, I saw he had a syringe in the ashtray. He is where he is now and it’s for the better. You ask me, one less smack head in this state is an improvement.”

  Seb pulled the gun from Brody’s forehead and fired at Thorp. He missed, instead hitting the fender of the Fairlane directly to Thorp’s right. It was close enough, a good scare.

  Thorp lowered his gun.

  “That’s it. On the ground. Kick it over.” Seb glanced at Brody while he was bending down to retrieve the Franklin. He deposited it into the inside pocket of his coat. “It seems now you’re getting an understanding of what you’re in for.”

  The gun barrel returned to Brody. “But first shit’s first. While I do take my friend being murdered serious, I take the personal affront you shamed me with to be of precedence.” The hammer was drawn back in a double click. Steel touched his forehead.

  Brody couldn’t bear it for another second and looked away from the gun. He gazed across the plains, all of this year’s crop harvested and gone, the soil underneath immaculate white. The snow fell in large, tangled clumps, seen to him as individual pixels, too small to waste the sonar’s processing power in giving their intricacies detail. He watched the flakes glide past, felt them alight on his face for the last time. He wanted it to be a surprise when the end came. Perhaps, if he had a guardian angel, he or she might swoop down and sweep his spirit away so he wouldn’t have to feel anything or even hear the crack of gunfire.

  And that was when the sonar picked up something in the distance, a solitary figure in the far reaches of the field, walking up in a composed gait.

  He was too afraid to shout, to alarm Seb and make him accidentally squeeze the trigger prematurely. He wanted to see what would happen, his final wish. He watched as the gauzy silhouette became two, then three. Then a crowd of ten or more identically sized people, all matching strides.

  At once, he understood. Even though he could still see them afterward, Brody closed his eyes.

  He wouldn’t be simply shot in the head. He would be twisted into a pretzel by viciously territorial Arties. There it was, the two ways he would be unceremoniously expulsed from the world. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.

  “What’d you say?” Seb snapped.

  Brody trained the one blind eye that wasn’t being crowded with a gun barrel toward Seb, more out of habit than anything. He swallowed. “Something I just saw troubled me.”

  Seb formed a half grin. “And what’s that? You saw a vision of me dancing on your fucking corpse, me tea-bagging your buddy over there for shits and giggles after I do him in? Tell me. Oh, wait, I know. You saw your name on that bullet inside the barrel of my guh—”

  Hot viscera sprayed into Brody’s face. He ducked aside, Seb’s finger squeezed, and the gun discharged inches above his head. The Artificial stood behind Seb, its arm elbow-deep into his back—a mud-clotted hand gripping a twisted, slippery mass of his intestines sticking out the front.

  Seb looked over his shoulder. “What … the fuck?”

  Thorp moved back but kept the gun raised. “We need to go.”

  “Where’s the property line?” Brody asked as the other Artificials drew near.

  Seb turned, angled the gun against the closest Artificial’s head, and pulled the trigger. It flinched, retracted its arm back through Seb, the tangle of guts going in again. Seb moaned. It cast the mass aside and stepped forward, seeing that its job was not complete.

  Seb slapped a hand over his gushing wound, but it still left a trail as he staggered toward Brody and Thorp. “Please,” he gargled.

  The robots followed. One grabbed him by the forearm and Seb’s face twisted. He turned and fired into the robot again and again. Another seized him and turned his wrist, bones breaking, the gun landing in the snow with a fluff. Seb screamed, and it was quickly snuffed out when a metal hand of rubberized fingers was placed atop his skull. It wrenched backward until his head touched the small of his back. Sudden silence then as he sunk down among the feet of Artificials and into his ignominious end, a twisted heap.

  Brody pushed Thorp in the direction the car tracks led. They ran through snow, skidding on unsure feet, stumbling and yet managing not to fall. Behind them, the whine of servos and the steady tramp of spiked legs punching through the frozen earth, cutting the distance between them effortlessly.

  The ditch, and the end of the property line beyond, was still a distance. They weren’t going fast enough. Brody pushed as hard as he could, throwing his arms and legs and charging through the ankle-deep snow. Thorp clanged along, his overloaded rucksack weighing him down. He was lagging behind.

  “Get rid of the bag,” Brody shouted.

  Thorp yanked it from his shoulder, spun with it, and heaved the heavy bag of guns at the robots. One was bowled over by it, but the others gracefully dodged their waylaid companion and continued the chase without it.

  They ran on, but the road was still too far—the Artificials coming up on them too fast.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Thorp rasped. He was still carrying stuff, jangling as he ran, bogged down.

  Brody noticed the set of ordis and ripped them from Thorp’s belt. He tucked Thorp’s under his arm and still running, still fighting his way through the snow both on the ground and blowing into his face,
he opened the lid of Alton’s Mediapurisu. He had left the holo-video player running. He could hear servos behind him, feel hands trying to snag the woolen fibers of his peacoat, missing—but getting closer. He slapped the touch pad with an open hand. “Come on.”

  “We’re sorry. The holo-video you want to watch was recorded in a space much smaller than the one you are in now. Would you like to continue, even with—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Brody screamed.

  Unseen to Brody, Alton Noel appeared floating beside them, gliding along the snow in a seated position. He narrated the chase: “I don’t know what to do … I wish time would stop …”

  Brody took a chance and with a flick of his wrist flung the Mediapurisu ordi away. It sailed through the air, Brody imagining Alton Noel riding within its orbit like a seated, weeping god. As Brody wanted, some of the Artificials gave chase. A few remained on them, but it was enough of a distraction that there was a moment’s indecision among the horde of robot farmers when they weren’t sure what to pursue. It bought Brody and Thorp time to make it to the ditch and leap over to the road beyond.

  The robots stopped at the property line, dogs hitting their invisible fence, all with the same fixed stare on their fleshless faces, watching the two men walk off into the blinding rush of snow.

  One called after them in monotone, “This is private property. Please do not trespass on this land again.”

  Behind them, the ghost of Alton Noel asked for mercy, snowflakes passing through his skin of light.

  They walked with their heads bent forward into the fierce wind, hands pulled into sleeves, collars turned up, and each letting loose uncontrollable frozen grunts each time they got blasted by another salvo. The farm was still a couple of miles off, and before they were even a mile away from the field, they had lost feeling in their hands and feet.

  “This isn’t really what I had in mind when you asked me to come out here,” Brody said. “I haven’t dropped a line into a single pond yet.”

  “To be honest with you, it wasn’t what I had in mind, either.” Thorp laughed, his voice muffled, half his face tucked into the collar of his coat.