Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “Oh this is perfect,” I mutter. Witnesses rear-ending an Uhrwerkmänn are exactly what I need. I yank out my pistol and empty a clip at the damned robot. I’m not sure how much damage I do, but it certainly feels good.

  Beside me, Clyde does his thing. A spattering of nonsense syllables and something slams into the Uhrwerkmänn’s drooling chin. It is rocked back, up onto two feet, and then back, sitting down on its arse, dazed. Clyde skids back along Jericho Street’s bumpy tarmac, sneakers squealing in protest.

  Behind the Uhrwerkmänn, the truck slams to a halt. I wait for it to flee. But it sits there.

  And why the hell would a truck back up the street toward the insane Uhrwerkmänn? That doesn’t seem sensible.

  Oh no.

  I almost expect it, but it doesn’t make it any better. The massive shadow shape moving between the Uhrwerkmänn and the truck.

  Oh shit.

  “Friedrich’s here!” I yell. “Engage! Engage!” I jam another magazine into my pistol, start charging, firing. And now would have been a really nice bloody time to have some people positioned behind that Uhrwerkmänn.

  The back of the truck opens up. More silhouettes. And not one of them has the decency to be small.

  The maddened Uhrwerkmänn manages to get out one more “Gooooone!” before its minimally more rational compatriots are upon it. There are at least four of them. They pin its arms and legs.

  Then Friedrich is there as well. He plunges a fist toward his struggling victim’s chest, flings a sheet of metal aside. His fist descends once more. Machinery follows, caught in the glare of streetlights. Dripping oil painted red by the brakelights of his truck.

  I’m running, moving as fast as I can while still maintaining something that resembles an aim. I empty a second magazine into Friedrich’s arse. He ignores me.

  Damn it, I know what he’s doing. This is the very definition of bad. Friedrich’s followers heave on limbs. Metal screams, but the body starts to twist, reconfigure itself.

  “Clyde!” I scream. “Something big!”

  “Ushtar mol koltar fal ectum bal melsith—” Clyde’s garbled words ring out in the street.

  Friedrich wrenches on one more internal organ. Blue light starts to flood the street.

  Shit and balls.

  “—bel telsin!” Clyde screams.

  Suddenly every streetlight goes out. The brakes on the truck die. Only the glowing blue light of the reconfigured Uhrwerkmänn… no, of the Uhrwerkgerät lights the scene.

  Except, wait… there’s a second blue glow in the street. Coming from the back of the truck. And in that thin light I see that the new Uhrwerkgerät isn’t exactly the same as the old one. Volk was a teardrop of metal. This Uhrwerkmänn has become more of an arc. An arm or perhaps a leg is perpendicular to the rest of the body, pointing into the radius of the curve. And this isn’t a new Uhrwerkgerät. It’s a new component of the same one.

  Two glows… Two components of one bomb…

  Volk is in the back of that truck.

  Further analysis is cut short by Clyde’s spell roaring into full effect. Darkness is only the first of the absences to open up in the street before me. A sucking vacuum grabs at me, starts to drag me down the street faster and faster.

  Friedrich reels, staggering back from the newly rendered component of the Uhrwerkgerät. I hear something crunch. And goddamn it, Clyde actually hurt him. This could still turn out to be a good goddamn day.

  And then it really hits me. Yes, yes, this could be a damn fine day. Because if this Uhrwerkmänn is only a component of the whole then that means Friedrich isn’t done. That’s why Friedrich was kidnapping other Uhrwerkmänner. He needs them to finish building his bomb. To make it bigger. Friedrich’s work still isn’t done.

  Which means there still might be hope.

  “Schnell!” Friedrich yells. I’m close now. I can see the crumpled plate of armor on his left flank. The dragging tension of the spell lets up. I skid to a stop, take aim, searching for weak points.

  I change where I’m aiming. Friedrich isn’t the primary target. Those metal bastards holding the bomb are. I open fire. It’s still not enough. They reach the truck, slam the new component of the Uhrwerkgerät into the old.

  The blue light intensifies.

  Clyde is howling mad nonsense behind me. That same dragging vacuum fills the air. It pulls me toward Friedrich. And I want to shout no, he’s not the target. He’s not what’s important here. But it’s already too late.

  Because there’s another crunch from Friedrich. Because another plate of armor is damaged, the edges are peeled back, more weak points exposed.

  Because we have the monumental Uhrwerkmänn’s attention now.

  Grinding one fist into another, Friedrich turns and advances upon us.

  49

  In a James Bond movie this is the moment when I would do some truly epic shit. Probably shoot an Uhrwerkmänn in some minuscule weak spot, causing it and all the other robots to detonate in a cascading chain of explosions, while I surf a shining piece of wreckage down the street toward freedom.

  Personally, though, I’ve always subscribed more to the Kurt Russell school of movie hi-jinks. And as absurd as many of his antics are, Kurt Russell is also a man who can recognize a sensible moment to turn and hoof it.

  So I do that.

  Possibly not a moment too soon. The sound of Friedrich’s fist striking the spot where I just stood physically assaults me. Tarmac seems to quake beneath my feet. Gritty shrapnel smashes against my calves and thighs.

  I hear the damaged plates of Friedrich’s stomach grate as he straightens, prepares to launch another blow. Even if he misses with this one, I suspect I am unlikely to survive a third attempt. I need cover.

  I scan the street. Hannah is the first thing I see. “Covering fire!” I yell, dashing left. I need a storefront, a restaurant. A door I can burst through.

  “Negative!” I hear her yell as I retreat. “The Uhrwerkgerät!”

  What the hell?

  The whistle of Friedrich’s fist past my ear is almost enough to turn my bowels to water. I see the outstretched fist in my peripheral vision for a moment, then I am running past it.

  That was the second time.

  Somewhere in the back of my head, I can hear a calm reasonable voice reminding me that if I die from something that isn’t the Uhrwerkgerät then I’ll cause the end of reality as we know it. That all those lives will be on my recently deceased conscience. I decide that I’ll kick that voice’s arse later, but right now it needs to take a ticket and wait its turn.

  And then a door. A restaurant door. The clientele at the front tables leaving their costly meals and pressing up to the windows, trying to work out what the hell is going on out there.

  The slight wrench of metal is all the warning I get.

  The people in the restaurant see me coming at the last moment. A dull shape rocketing toward them through the glare of the restaurant’s lights.

  My leap sends me flying at the large plate glass window, head tucked down, arms above my head. Glass shatters unwillingly. The crack runs up and down the length of my spine, scrambling my head and scorching my tailbone.

  I skid through glass. People scream. I feel my clothes and flesh tear. There isn’t really time to care. I pick myself up, ignore the swaying in my stride. I raise my arm—

  My gun… Where is my gun?

  I see it lying in the glass shards, bend down, scoop it up. Restaurant-goers back away from me. People are shrieking. I am beyond being able to make work it all out. The only thing that matters is that Friedrich is out there.

  I start shooting through the window I just smashed.

  Another scream. This one from outside.

  A moment later, Hannah crashes through the restaurant door.

  “Jesus fuck!” she yells. “Did you even aim at anything?”

  I force my eyes to focus on her.

  “You were going after the Uhrwerkgerät,” I say. My voice sounds slurred ev
en to me.

  “Couldn’t get to it. Doubled back to save your stupid arse. And then you shot at me.”

  “At Friedrich,” I correct.

  Hannah pulls her suit jacket out to one side. A neat bullet hole punctures the front and back.

  “Missed me by a fucking inch. You idiot.”

  “When I give an order and you don’t obey it, I don’t know where you are,” I yell.

  People are all around us, staring. This is not the time for arguments. I step away from Hannah and this madness. Step toward the night and the battle and the Uhrwerkgerät and everything we actually need to get done here.

  Next to me a man, more adventurous than his fellow diners, has edged ahead of me, peering out into the street.

  “Get back,” I yell at him.

  Too late.

  The restaurant’s remaining windows erupt as Friedrich backhands the entire façade.

  The adventurous man flies into me. What is left of him at least. His bones have given way under the pressure of Friedrich’s blow. The meat of him has pulped. I am smashed backwards by someone who now resembles a very large hamburger patty.

  Revulsion rolls over me and I roll over the floor. Together we smash through tables, chairs, legs. My head rings.

  I skid to a halt. Above me the world spins. I wait for it to come back into focus. When it does something is wrong.

  I must be hallucinating. I am next to a table, looking up and Kayla is there. A spaghetti noodle is halfway into her mouth, dripping tomato sauce. A man is standing nearby, backed up against the wall, a look of pure terror on his face.

  Hallucination-Kayla shakes her head.

  “I should have feckin’ known,” she says.

  50

  I close my eyes. Reopen them. No, Kayla is still there.

  “What the—” I manage before my lungs give up and decide to just gasp for a bit. Some distant part of my brain is registering that I am covered in quite a large volume of someone else’s blood. The man standing behind Kayla looks like he wants to climb up the wall and hunker up near the ceiling just so he can get further away from me.

  From the look on Kayla’s face she is not overly pleased to see me.

  I realize she is wearing the outfit she wore to the nightclub. The one that is form-fitting and skimpy. I can’t quite work out what is happening.

  “Do you feckers,” Kayla says, biting savagely through her noodle strand, “have any feckin’ clue how hard it is to assess someone as a feckin’ potential sperm donor?”

  This strand of questioning is not helping me get my bearings any faster. Screams are coming from the front of the restaurant; the sound of Friedrich removing important structural parts of the building’s façade.

  “No,” I manage. My body is singing with pain.

  “I have to have Tabitha hack the donor clinic’s feckin’ databases. I have to find someone local who isn’t a feckin’ genetic cesspool. I have to find him online, solicit a feckin’ date out of him. And once I’ve done that. Found an actual candidate to be the father to my feckin’ child. Then you fecks…” She trails off. Overcome by bile, I think.

  Behind her, the man trying to climb the walls has decided to share his horror at me with his horror at Kayla. She follows my gaze, sneers scorn at him. “Don’t feckin’ worry, pet. No way you were going to get any. Not sure how you made the donation in the first feckin’ place. Thought you had to have some balls for that.”

  Another scream from the front of the building. The pop-pop-pop of Hannah’s pistol. Shit. This probably wasn’t the time to leave her alone up there.

  I look to Kayla. There are many questions. Not the least of which revolves around the fact that she had Tabitha hack a fertility clinic’s database. So many levels of wrong. But more important is my need to get in the fight now.

  Unfortunately, due to the mild cranial scrambling of my most recent injuries, what actually comes out is, “How the hell do you even hide a sword in that outfit?”

  Kayla closes her eyes. She seems to find my idiocy painful. “You don’t,” she finally spits. She reaches across the table, grabs a steak knife. “You make feckin’ do.”

  51

  Kayla launches herself across the room. I manage to get to my feet, scramble in her wake. The center of the room is almost clear of diners now. They press up against the walls, slowly creeping toward the back of the room. Survival instinct versus the paralysis of sheer terror.

  The sensible response in other words.

  I on the other hand move rapidly and in the wrong direction. I plant one foot on a chair, launch myself, crash down on a table. I leap from one to the next. Tablecloths skid beneath me. Cutlery flies. Crockery smashes.

  Hannah is on her back at the front of the room. She’s clutching her left shoulder, pistol lying discarded on the ground. Friedrich’s arm is still reaching through the devastated front windows, scrabbling after her.

  It reaches up above her. Ready to swat her into oblivion.

  I aim my pistol.

  Kayla beats me to it. She leaps almost a third of the length of the room. Her body arches back, arms raised above her head, steak knife clutched in both fists. I really hope it’s one of those Japanese knives. The ones that make soda cans look like they’re made of butter. Except this doesn’t look like it’s that classy a restaurant.

  Kayla slams into Friedrich’s hand. A red-headed battering ram. She plunges the knife down, punching toward a seam in the metal, ripping, tearing.

  Friedrich’s swat is arrested. The bee-sting stab of Kayla’s knife holding him still.

  Abruptly he whips his hand back and forth, shaking it with improbable violence.

  Kayla rides the bucking bronco of his fingers for about two seconds, which is at least one and a half seconds more than seems possible. Then she’s flying toward one restaurant wall. She spins in midair, manages to get her feet beneath her. Then she is leaping away, somersaulting backwards, landing on her feet.

  Friedrich’s hand retreats. She flings the steak knife after it and I see it slam into the joint between two fingers even as she snatches up a second knife.

  Then it’s not only the hand pulling back. Friedrich steps away.

  The bastard can be hurt.

  The front of the restaurant is pure devastation, glass, and brick, and splintered tables. I land in the mess of it as Kayla pulls Hannah to her feet. Hannah grimaces, spitting curses. When she’s finished she manages, “Bloody clipped my shoulder.”

  Kayla nods quietly, a look of surprising empathy on her face. Then she violently wrenches Hannah’s arm up and back. Hannah screams. There is a pop that makes my stomach shudder.

  Kayla nods. “Right as feckin’ rain,” she says.

  Hannah is still gasping. But there’s not really time to waste. “After him,” I yell, pointing in the general direction of all things clockwork and brutal.

  And then, just to make sure nothing can get any worse, Hannah and I manage to collide with each other as we go through the goddamn window.

  I land hard, and mostly face down. Still I get the better of it. I collided with Hannah’s injured shoulder.

  She howls again. She manages to fit a lot of four-letter words into it.

  “Oh God, are you all right?” Suddenly Clyde is there, running out of the burgeoning darkness. He comes to a halt beside Hannah. “Well I guess obviously not. The whole screaming thing. Bit of a giveaway, I suppose. Should be asking how I can help.” He levers Hannah to her feet. “I mean, well, now I am helping. And you’re back on your feet again, so that’s good. No worse for wear, I bet. Made of tough stuff.”

  Why does he sound like some terrible TV dad version of himself?

  Hannah steps away from him, starts down the street. I can hear the pounding of giant metallic feet and the revving of a truck engine. “Come on!” She sounds impatient. “They’re getting away!”

  I start after her. I’ve lost track of Kayla, but that probably only means she’s ahead of us. Probably armed with a can o
pener this time.

  “Oh!” Clyde says from behind us. “I can help!”

  Even as I run, I brace myself. Clyde’s help has not, historically, been as helpful as promised.

  Hannah suddenly yells. She’s running hard, despite still needing to hold her shoulder. But now her feet are pedalling wildly through thin air. She lifts up into the sky.

  “What the bloody arse hell?” she yells. “Put me down!”

  “But I’m lifting you onto the rooftops,” Clyde calls from behind us.

  I glance over my shoulder. Clyde’s eyes are blazing sparks of white light in the night, casting illumination onto his upraised palms as he lifts them up. With each inch they ascend, Hannah gains another foot.

  “You’ll have tactical oversight,” Clyde says. Then, again with that odd paternal smugness in his voice, “Plus you’re injured and this will keep you out of harm’s way.”

  “I will bloody shoot you in your bloody face if you don’t put me bloody down this bloody minute!”

  Hannah is actually aiming at him.

  Jesus. This is so not the time…

  “Do it.” Tabitha’s voice is flat as a judge’s gavel landing.

  “Don’t do it!” I snap back. I don’t think she will but better safe than sorry.

  “But Tabby…”

  The steady ascent of Clyde’s hands falters. Hannah jerks wildly through the air. At least it’s probably throwing her aim off.

  In the background the truck’s engines rev again. I can’t hear Friedrich’s footsteps any more.

  “…I’m protecting her,” Clyde continues. “I’m keeping her safe. Being responsible.” He’s talking with his hands now. Hannah whips back and forth through the air above my head. “I’m trying to show you…”

  He pauses, trying to find the words. His hands pause with him. Hannah hangs into the air, about a foot above my head. The truck’s lights blaze. The sound of it rolling into motion.

  “Put her down, Clyde,” I say, but he’s lost in his confusion and misery.

  “They’re getting away with the pissing Uhrwerkgerät.” Hannah’s voice is full of frustration.