Delmar slapped the wall next to his bed. “Tran, she’s already had three cups. Mother will grow fangs if she drinks that much tea.”
“Mind your business,” snapped a pert, grey-haired woman who knelt on the floor. She continued to roll clothing into tight bundles. “This village is doomed and I need the energy.”
Tran handed the cup to Flora and sat in a far corner of the room. He watched as she took a long slurp of tea.
“Just listen to the gossip,” she said. “The women in this place are looking forward, not backward. They’ve been stuffing everything into packs and sacks, bags and boxes.”
Delmar sighed and pulled the blanket higher around his chest. “I won’t leave without Kaya.”
A knock sounded at the door and a smiling girl with brown hair walked in.
“Speak of the devil,” said Flora. “Anyway, Tran will need help carrying you.”
Tran’s face turned red and he stared down at the patterned rug on the floor.
“What do you mean?” asked Kaya. “Who’s carrying what where?”
Delmar waved his hand limply. “Mother thinks we’ll have to leave Station because of the attack.”
“It’s not just me, the other families are packing,” said Flora, nodding like an angry hen.
“They’re preparing, but I’ve only heard good news about the fighting,” said Kaya softly. “Wilson destroyed a tank and a great, silver bird flew from the mountain and killed hundreds of the Circle. Did you see it?”
“No, dear. I’ve been here the whole day.”
“I saw it,” said Tran, from his corner.
The door vibrated from a rapid knock.
“Check for a line of visitors out there,” said Flora.
Kaya opened the door. A boy stood in the corridor––Alfie, one of Wilson’s Runners.
“We need help in the rectory,” said Alfie. “Too many wounded and not enough hands.”
“Oh! I didn’t know,” said Kaya.
She left a small bundle of food with Delmar, then kissed him on the cheek.
“If you have clean clothes or blankets, please bring them,” said Alfie.
Kaya nodded as she left the room.
“Tran,” Flora pulled a roll of blankets from under her chair. “Take these to the rectory.”
The boy held the blankets in his arms and shuffled to the corridor. He waited until Alfie had closed the door, then grabbed him by the sleeve.
“Do you need help? A fighter?”
Alfie looked puzzled. “Hausen said you have to stay with Flora.”
“It will be fine.” Tran chopped his hand forward. “I want to fight.”
“I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Tran stared at Alfie. “I promise. It will be fine.”
WITH THE HELP of the sight-trick Wilson took the metal steps two at a time into the heart of the Tombs. A deep rumble and a muffled, repeated clanging filled the stairwell.
The air warmed. Wilson guessed the air circulators were offline but it gave him the strange feeling that he was descending into Hell.
At the bottom he opened the access hatch to the cavern slowly. A chaotic mass of machinery sounds burst inside. A silver spider-arm whizzed by the doorway, a whining drill in its metal claws. Squadrons of robotic appendages sped around the ceiling, clumsily banging against everything in the room like an insane contest of drunken hummingbirds.
The ring of glass-domed controller beds suffered scrapes and pings from low-swooping mechanical arms. Only Father Reed’s dome glowed with a blue light––Jack’s light had finally faded away and was no different from the other dead controllers.
Wheels squealed nearby and a hard surface slammed into Wilson. He fell and slid halfway across the cavern. As he got to his feet, Wilson noticed the floor and his hands were covered with a slick chemical that smelled faintly sweet, like rotten apples.
The Zoomba sped out of the shadows toward him, a waist-high rounded white cylinder. Four silver arms waved around the central axis of the machine. One arm ended in a brush and the others held similar, harmless-looking tools.
Wilson tried to step out of the way at the last second but the Zoomba turned and slammed into him again, knocking him off his feet. Wilson yelled in pain as the machine pushed him across the slick floor and smashed his shoulders into a concrete wall.
The cylinder backed off and circled the floor of the cavern, a trail of slick chemicals bubbling after it.
Wilson pulled out his pistol and fired two shots at the machine as it curved back in his direction. The weapon flew out of his hand as the Zoomba shoved his legs into the wall. Tools waving erratically, the cleaner went back to its route once again.
Wilson felt his knees and ribs where he’d been struck. He stood from the floor shakily and controlled his breathing, hands at his sides.
Half a minute later the robot whirred straight at Wilson. The instant before it touched him, Wilson flashed away and shoved it into the wall with a yell. The cylinder exploded into metal chunks and thousands of white plastic fragments, most of which skidded or bounced across the slick floor to the opposite wall. The round wheelbase of the Zoomba whirred like a dying top until the last spark of power faded away. Wilson brushed gray dust and pieces of wire from his face and jacket.
The spider-arms still zipped and clanged around the ceiling. Wilson kept his back to the wall and crept to the door of the medical section. The opener button failed to respond when he pushed it, and he couldn’t get a grip on the smooth surface of the door to use his enhanced strength.
He inched his way further around the wall of the noisy cavern. As he crept along, he kept his eyes on the clanking machines and tripped over a tarnished, ancient box. When he stood up a gang of spider arms were clustered noisily around the stairwell door. Badger stood a few meters into the room, her hunting knife throwing a flurry of sparks as she sliced at the snapping metal pincers around her.
“Kira! Move back to the wall,” yelled Wilson.
Badger dodged a quartet of jabbing claws and back-pedaled to the wall. She kept her hand on the concrete and followed it around old metal boxes and green cylinders to Wilson. The silver spider-arms went back to spinning around the ceiling and fighting with each other.
Badger hugged Wilson around the neck.
“Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “I’m fine. Just a few scratches.”
The left sleeve of her leather jacket was ripped and bloody. Wilson had an extra bandage in his pocket and wrapped the laceration firmly.
“How’s Reed?”
“I can’t get close enough to tell,” said Wilson. “But his dome is still lit and those other lights at the base are working. He might be alive, but who knows?”
Badger wiped sweat from her forehead. “It won’t matter with all these idiot machines flying around.”
“I need to find a way to reset the systems. Maybe snapping the power off for a few seconds will do it.”
Badger laughed. “And maybe you can shoot lightning from you eyes. How in the three bloody cats are we going to turn anything off? You don’t even know where the reactor is.”
“Such language from such a pretty face! It’s not true––there’s a corridor at the far end of this room that leads to the power control room.”
“When did you figure this out?”
Wilson took a yellow and blue roll of paper from his jacket. “A week ago, when Reed found this map of the facility. We decided not to tell anyone else. Hausen would shut the whole place down rather than spend time studying it.”
Badger watched the noisy machines race around the room. “Let’s go do it, whatever it is.”
“Follow me.”
“You know I can’t see in the dark anymore.”
“Sorry. Watch your step.”
He took Badger by the hand. Using his sight-trick he led her around the dusty rectangles of machinery, pushing away smaller debris with his foot.
“Why didn’t you bring a lantern?”
“I didn’t have time,” said Badger. “I ran straight from the pass.”
“What’s going on up there?”
A spider-arm whizzed by and both ducked.
“We’re holding back the Circle, but just barely,” said Badger. “They keep on coming no matter how many we kill.”
“If they keep wearing us down there won’t be anyone left to fight.”
“Those animals are camping in the snow,” said Badger. “How long can they really last?”
At last Wilson touched the far corner. He followed the rough concrete wall further to a metal door.
“This is the way into the support area,” he said. “The problem is ... it’s not opening.”
He jammed his finger into the red “open” button. Nothing happened.
“There has to be another way to activate it,” said Badger. “Even the backups in this place have backups.”
Wilson felt the smooth face of the door. “It’s like glass.”
“Let me try. Watch out for your crazy metal friends.”
Badger ran the tips of her fingers along the inside of the door frame. Her fingernail caught on a chest-high seam and she pulled open a small panel.
“Here. Take a look at that.”
Wilson stuck his arm inside and felt the rough surface of a handle. He pulled hard on it and the door shifted slightly.
“See?” said Badger. “It’s like a manual thingy.”
“All right, all right.”
Wilson pulled and pushed the handle back and forth until the door cracked open a finger’s width. He breathed deeply and concentrated on the phrases of the strength trick, then pulled at the gap with both hands. With a scream of rusted metal, the door slid halfway open.
Badger looked back at the cavern. “Can those things come in here?”
“I don’t know,” said Wilson. “But I see rails on the ceiling of the corridor.”
He kept a firm grip on Badger’s hand as they crept through the pitch-black corridor. As she walked, Badger brushed the fingers of her free hand along the wall and felt a series of doors pass by.
“Did you search these rooms?”
Wilson shook his head then remembered that Badger couldn’t see. “No. They aren’t labeled anything related to power or the reactor.”
The pair wandered through black tunnels full of dusty equipment and cloth-covered boxes.
Wilson stopped in front of a door. “Here it is––FPG Control.”
“FPG?”
“Facility Power Generation.”
Wilson turned the lever and pushed but the door didn’t budge. When he used the strength-trick the door curved inside slightly, and fine grit and pebbles cascaded from the crack between the door and the frame.
Wilson wiped his palms on his trousers and sighed. “It’s blocked. The ceiling must have fallen in.”
“Sounds like we’re out of luck.”
A blade scraped loudly in the corridor.
“Get down!” yelled Wilson.
They dropped to the floor tiles as a metal claw zipped overhead, throwing sparks as it slashed at the wall. Wilson watched it disappear around a corner and listened for any others, but all he heard was the tidal in-and-out rush of his own breathing.
“Now what,” whispered Badger.
“Like you said, there’s always a backup. Another way might be through the discharge cylinder––we passed it on the way here.”
“Let’s go before that thing comes back,” said Badger.
After a few minutes of scrambling through the dark, Wilson turned and led Badger down an interminable metal stairwell. Each step made a rickety and nervous clang that echoed in all directions. At the bottom of the stairwell, Wilson stepped over piles of centuries-old dust and fallen rock fragments. He swung open a metal hatch and blue light streamed inside.
“Wait a second––let your eyes adjust,” he said.
The hatch opened to a high and narrow space, more like an eternal crack inside the mountain than anything made by the hands of men. At the far end a metal sphere dangled over a pit like a massive crystal ball. Blue lightning crackled down a supporting cylinder, over the sphere, and into the depths. During the short flash Wilson felt intense heat on his face and smelled something in the air, like meat forgotten in the oven. A spindly metal ladder and catwalk led across the pit to a platform above the sphere.
Instead of tile or concrete, the floor below their feet was a series of square metal grates. Cables as wide as a man’s forearm ran below the mesh and were covered in a layer of gray dust.
Something whirred behind them. Badger screamed and kicked as a pair of spider-arms grabbed her wrists and pulled her high into the air.
Wilson dodged a snapping metal claw. Another ripped away a sleeve of his leather jacket.
Badger struggled near the ceiling at least ten meters above Wilson’s head. A dozen thin robotic arms pulled her limbs and ripped at her clothing with their sharp pincers.
Wilson inhaled deeply and whispered a poem.
Leg coiled tight
Leg coiled hard
Leg coiled fast
Send me far
He squatted and jumped high, grabbing with both hands a clawed arm around Badger’s leg. Holding on with his left hand and squeezing with his right, he crushed the life out of the metal limb like it was a dry cornstalk.
Two claws speared into his shoulders painfully. Wilson let go of the first spider-arm and throttled both of the new attackers with the enhanced strength in his hands. He kicked away more claws and fell to the floor on his hands and feet like a cat.
The other claws pulled Badger across the ceiling toward the lightning sphere. Wilson ran across the floor and jumped again. He flew high into the air and crashed into Badger. He held onto her waist and pulled off the robotic arms one by one.
The claws swung over the crackling sphere of lightning and suddenly let go. In free-fall, Wilson squeezed Badger with his left arm. He yelled as the armpit of his other arm slammed into the catwalk’s metal railing.
Badger climbed onto the narrow grates and pulled Wilson to safety. He gasped in pain.
“Are you okay?”
“My arm ... it feels broken.”
“Come on.”
Badger helped him walk along the catwalk to a small, circular platform. Below their feet lay the mad, crackling sphere. A wide structural rod ran from the sphere to the dark reaches of the ceiling, and the platform circled the upper section. The intense heat or something else in the air made the small hairs on the back of Wilson’s hands stand up.
Wilson collapsed on the platform with a numb arm and stabbing pain at his shoulder. Badger pulled off the shreds of his jacket, the parts that hadn’t been ripped by the robotic arms.
“How’s it look?”
“The shoulder’s not rounded,” said Badger. “There’s a bone or something pushing under the skin.”
“Don’t touch it!”
“I didn’t.”
Wilson twisted his head around and tried to get a look. He sighed and dropped back to the platform. “It’s dislocated.”
“You mean broken?”
Wilson shook his head. “No. Are those things still around?”
“I don’t see or hear any,” said Badger.
“I’m going to need your help. I can’t do anything until we pop the arm back into place.”
“All right.”
“Hold the arm at the wrist and elbow. Wait! Okay, push the wrist up to the shoulder. Gahh ... don’t worry, I can take the pain. Now lower it back down. Keep the elbow from moving. Push the wrist to my left. Hoooo boy. Now pull it toward you.”
The joint slid back into place and the pain instantly went away.
“You did it! Thank you.”
Badger leaned over Wilson and gave him a kiss. “No––thank you.”
“All’s well that ends in a dislocated arm, I guess.”
Wilson made a sling from the scraps of his jacket as Badger kept watch.
“I don’t understand what this pit is for,” she said. “Did they shove prisoners into it?”
“Probably not.” Wilson pointed at the cylinder at the center of the platform. “That says ‘FPG Discharge.’ If this place has something to do with the reactor, maybe I can access the controls from here.”
Badger helped him to his feet and over to a display embedded in the cylinder. Wilson began to enter all the passwords that priests were required to memorize. At last he gained access and tapped through the power generation menus.
“If I knew what I was doing I could just reset the specific subsystems. Since that’s not the case, the best solution is a short power-off and restart. Grab onto something, dear.”
Badger slid an arm around his waist.
Wilson nodded. “Now that’s something.”
The entire cavern dimmed, lit only by a faint orange heat radiating up from the metal sphere.
“Aaaany second now ...”
Bright wall-lights snapped alive and sparks popped across the sphere again.
Badger clapped her hands. “Can you turn off those crazy machines from here?”
“Not really, but after the restart they should be asleep or at least back to normal.”
“What about the reactor?”
Wilson swiped through the display menus.
“That’s strange ... the reactor sub-system is asking for a special code. I can’t even get a status update.”
Once more he tried all the passwords he could remember.
“No use. It’s still locked.”
“I’m just a dumb girl from the mountains,” said Badger. “But that might be something to figure out.”
“You’re not just a dumb girl, but I agree––we need to find a password. Since the power has been reset, let’s check on Reed.”
MAST TOOK HIS TURN at the narrow choke-point. He fired all of his rounds at the Circle troops hiding behind the rocks, missed every shot, and walked up to the dugout in disgust.
Alfie and Tran jogged out of the falling snow from the direction of Station. Both carried crossbows and packets of bolts tied with string.
Mast pointed at Tran. “What’s he doing here?”
“He wanted to help,” said Alfie.
The Dream Widow Page 12