Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

TEN MINUTES LATER. KAYLA’S CAR

  “You drive.” Kayla tosses her keys to me as we approach her car. I manage to get a hand up before they break my nose.

  To describe the silence as tense would be a little like describing the Uhrwerkmänner as giant mechanical robots designed by the German, Joseph Lang. It would be describing it perfectly.

  As we pull out into traffic I feel I need to break the silence before it breaks me. “We have to do something about Clyde,” I say. “Talk him back down. I can—”

  “Shh,” Kayla hisses at me.

  I glance over. She has her mobile held to her ear. “Yes,” she says, her voice far softer than I’ve ever heard it before, the harsh edges of her accent become gentle curves. “Doctor Merrigold please.” A pause. “Yes, I’ll hold.”

  God, is Kayla going to make a booty call while I’m in the car with her? Though some old-fashioned part of me is impressed that she’s hooking up with a doctor at least.

  The traffic nudges forward, disgorging us into a faster moving road—cars eager to escape Oxford’s maze of streets.

  “Hello,” Kayla says, pauses. “Yes, I’ve thought it over and I looked at the files you’ve given me.” Another pause. “Yes, I found a candidate I like. A very impressive selection. Thank you.” Another pause. Then a laugh. Soft and sweet. And genuine, which is what really blows me away. “Yes. Next week sometime? Tuesday sounds fantastic.” She hangs up. After a moment she catches me looking.

  “Feckin’ what?”

  “Who—” I start.

  “Feckin’ personal business,” she snaps.

  I shrug, still mindful that my pre-emptive death could trigger a whole end-of-the-world type of scenario. We escape the gravity of Oxford’s roads.

  “Sperm bank,” Kayla says suddenly. I almost crash into an oncoming Vauxhall.

  “What?” I manage.

  “On the phone earlier,” she says. “It were the sperm bank. I’ve picked one to baste my belly.”

  Well there’s a lovely turn of phrase. I try to avoid the image it wants to summon. “Oh,” I say. I think I even manage to keep my voice level. Then an additional concern hits me. “Not the guy from the restaurant?” I say. My voice is less steady this time.

  Kayla snorts. “No, not that wee one. Pretty, but far too feckin’ interested in organic composting for me to want to carry on his feckin’ seed for another generation.”

  Personally, I think organic composting sounds like a noble goal, but maybe it’s not a good opening gambit on a first date. There again, given the state of my love life maybe I’m not one to give advice.

  I try to think of more substantive commentary, mindful of Kayla’s threat regarding her sword and my posterior.

  I settle for a good, meaningful, “You’re sure about this?”

  “I just rang the fecker and made the appointment.”

  I nod. There is that, but…

  “And you saw her,” Kayla says more quietly, maybe sensing my unspoken objection. “She’s not interested in me any more. She’s off to bigger, better things. I’m wee, and mortal, and… old. She’s a Dreamer. What can I offer her that infinite possibilities can’t?” She suddenly sounds very defeated. But then she rallies. “I’m going to start over. My child. Something I have a stake in. That has a stake in me. I’m taking charge of my future. Some bullshit like that anyway.” She looks at me, and the belligerent fire is back in her eye. “Feck this preordained destiny bullshit, I feckin’ say. I’m captain of my own feckin’ ship. And it’s a pirate ship, and we drink rum every night, and piss on our enemies. And anyone who wants to steer the feckin’ tiller is going to have to go through feckin’ me.” There is a swagger in these last words, a tricky thing to pull off in a car passenger seat, but she pulls it off.

  “Aye captain.” I even throw her a salute.

  “You making feckin’ fun of me, Agent feckin’ Wallace?”

  “Not for a moment.” And it’s the truth too.

  “But you’re still going to be a miserable bastard about all this? This going-to-die shite?”

  I shrug. “I’m here, aren’t I?” I say. “I’m still fighting.”

  “That because you still have a spark of feckin’ hope in you, or just because you don’t know what the feck else to do with yourself?”

  Kayla’s words are as sharp as her sword sometimes.

  “Can it be both?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I don’t feckin’ know. I don’t watch that morning television shite. I just pick something and feckin’ do it. All this waffle bullshit isn’t worth the time.”

  I smile. I should spend more time hanging out with Kayla, I think. Even if it might require body armor for me to feel totally safe.

  “Amen to that,” I say, and we drive on.

  62

  A RATHER SHITTY LOOKING INDUSTRIAL WASTELAND ON THE EDGE OF SHEFFIELD

  The abandoned factory is much as I remember it. Kind of shitty. Kayla and I traipse through. She has her sword drawn and tosses it from hand to hand, watching the blade catch the light.

  “No offense,” I say, “but I do wish Clyde hadn’t run off so he could be here still.”

  “Feckin’ supportive,” Kayla says.

  “You know what I mean,” I say. “He’s good for when we go up against people twice our size.”

  Kayla sniffs, still mock-offended. I chew my lip. Reassuring chats with Kayla are never particularly reassuring.

  “He’ll calm down,” I say, so at least one of us is doing the inspiring-confidence thing. “He’ll come back.”

  “Before or after this apocalypse shite you’re so busy crapping your pants over?”

  I am saved from needing to explain the difference between the apocalypse and reality popping like a wayward soap bubble by an unexpected sight. Unfortunately it’s not a good unexpected sight. Rather, it’s the vast chunk of rusting machinery that hid the entrance to the Uhrwerkmänner’s tunnels flung aside like a child’s plaything.

  The massive hulk of machinery lies on its side, looking more deflated than steel ever should look. I am reminded of a horseshoe crab turned on its back, the sense that somehow all this is beneath its dignity.

  The gash in the floor lies exposed.

  My eyebrows furrow in concern. “Is it just me,” I ask, “or did they seem quite particular about keeping that hidden last time we were here?”

  “Like grannies fussing over wee porcelain feckin’ figures, they were.” Kayla unsheathes her sword.

  I hold up my hand. For a moment we just stand, still and silent.

  “Is someone doing construction work down there?” I ask.

  “Well,” Kayla shrugs, “it’s either that, or you know, having feckin’ discussed at length how Friedrich needs to use his kin for spare feckin’ parts to build this giant feckin’ bomb that has you knotting your panties into a bunch the size of Westminster Cathedral, it could be him kicking the ever-living shite out of the folk we’ve come to see.” She shrugs. “One or the other.”

  “I was really hoping you were going to say construction work.” But I’m already moving.

  “Hold up,” says Kayla behind me. “You bring a sword?”

  I shake my head. Kayla looks exasperated.

  “You’re better with a sword,” she points out.

  This is actually true. Except, “I get to be a lot further away from the giant murderous machines with a gun,” I say.

  “You get to do shite all feckin’ damage with a wee pop shooter. You got anything less than a feckin’ rocket launcher in your pocket then it’s a waste of feckin’ time.”

  Sadly that is true.

  Kayla sees me hesitate, and paces toward the hulk of rusting machinery so fast she blurs slightly. She reaches into the tangled mess of it, rips out something, tosses it to me. I catch it on reflex. A heavy steel rod, about an inch in diameter and three feet long. It’s been sheared off something and the last foot of the metal spends its time becoming a wicked point.

  “Try that,” she says. “
Actually be feckin’ effective for a bit.”

  “You fuss like my mum,” I tell her.

  Kayla nods. “Then your mum’s a feckin’ badass. Let’s go.”

  63

  My feet slap on hard unrelenting rock. Kayla’s are a distant thrum. The sound of combat rises like a storm racing across a plain toward me. Assuming it’s raining autowrecks at least.

  I plunge into the tunnel leading down to the Uhrwerkmänner’s shanty-cave. My feet skid down the steps. Somewhere at the back of my head my sense of self-preservation gives up yelling, puts up its feet, and goes on a coffee break.

  The stairs open up onto utter chaos. Machine pounds machine. There is no delicacy, no holding back. They simply fling themselves at each other. They fling each other at each other. This is the no-holds-barred UFC championship version of anarchy. Gobs of flaming oil fly back and forth across the room. There is the rattle of something that must be incredibly similar to heavy artillery. The buzz of a saw screaming through steel. The baritone crunch of steel on steel. Sparks flying like rain before a hurricane. Screams and howls that I cannot be sure don’t come from unhinged minds.

  An Uhrwerkmänn advances through the crowd. It’s marching straight forward while its torso blurs in three hundred and sixty degree arcs. Its arms are extended and in its fists it clenches bundles of jagged rebar that jut between bronze knuckles. A robot wanders within range and loses a substantial portion of its torso in a spray of oil and sparks. Flame licks the room like a lover.

  Some sort of shot passes through another Uhrwerkmänn’s head, shredding gears. One robot puts its fist through the weakened armor plating of another and it lodges there. The Uhrwerkmänn limps around using its spasming opponent as a makeshift battering ram, dealing titanic damage to anyone and everyone around it.

  It’s too much to take in. A vast bricolage of deranged violence. The sort of ecstasy of destruction that would make Hieronymous Bosch all hot beneath the collar.

  I fling myself at it. For a moment I just give into the madness, the fear, the frustration. For a moment I just don’t care. It’s almost impossible to tell one side from the other, so I pick one that looks better cared for than the others and spear it in the calf.

  Something has punctured the metal. My sharpened steel rod finds the nick like a key slotting into a lock and then violently fucking with it. I wrench left, right, swirl the rod about, feel things giving way. The Uhrwerkmänn staggers a step, drags me with it. I gain my feet for a second, rip the rod free. As the Uhrwerkmänn stumbles to the floor two more leap on it, start pounding away.

  I whirl. Adrenaline calls to me, corrals me. I leap up onto another shiny-looking robot, hands clamping onto the back of its thigh. I brace my feet against the knee joint, find something important-looking jutting from its lower back, and proceed to level it off in a shower of sparks. The Uhrwerkmänn jerks, almost throws me clear. To stabilize myself, I go ahead and stab it in its exposed spine. That seems to suffice.

  I jump free as it falls. I even twirl the rod around my fingers as I land. Kayla is right. I am better with a sword. There is a tactile quality to this violence that gets something dull and barbaric chanting in my gut.

  I lunge at another machine, jab-jab-jabbing with the blade of my makeshift sword. I slam it against armor until I feel something give. I lever sideways. Flame gouts out of the hole I tear. I stumble back as the Uhrwerkmänn stomps away bleeding fire.

  Another of the crazed bastards registers my presence, comes crashing after me. Its feet rise, fall, make the ground shake as it tries to pound me into the dirt. My steel rod suddenly feels a little more toothpick-like than I’d really like it to.

  Still, one of the nice things about being half the size of every other combatant on a crowded battlefield is that it does mean there’s a lot of cover. Admittedly most of that cover is involved in a life-or-death struggle and has a tendency to thrash about a lot, but I’ll take what I can get right now.

  I duck between the legs of one of the Uhrwerkmänner and hear my pursuer go crashing into it. I keep moving before one or both of them take it into their head to collapse on top of me.

  I take a moment, try to get my bearings. The effort is truncated by an Uhrwerkmänn’s head landing next to my feet. Kayla follows shortly after it.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asks me. She’s not even out of breath. She flicks her fringe from obscuring one eye to obscuring the other. “Let’s go get that one.”

  She points at the largest of the visible Uhrwerkmänner, a beast about two-thirds the height of Friedrich. Fighting near one wall he gleams silver among all the muck and rust.

  “That one?” I check. “He’s huge.”

  “That’s why it’s the most fun.” She darts toward him.

  Fun. Not exactly the word I would have gone for. Suicidal seems a more suitable replacement.

  And yet, I’m following in Kayla’s wake. Adrenaline screams its battle cry into my veins. The heft of the steel rod feels good in my hand.

  I see Kayla, already fifty yards ahead of me, launch herself into the air, a sword-pointed arrow flying toward the Uhrwerkmänn’s torso. It catches sight of her almost too late, twists. She scores a hit on its shoulder, glances off, up and away, but she bends at the waist, like she’s hinged there, and her feet slam into its head. The angle of her flight abruptly changes by ninety degrees. She whips around its head, curling her body, her sword completing a circle of torso, leg, and steel that spins around its head scoring deep gashes in the armor plates.

  The Uhrwerkmänn claws at her with a hand. She twists but he snags her, flings her away.

  She’s back on her feet when I get there, ready to launch.

  She goes high and I go low. I hear her blade strike steel but then my own dance of death distracts me. My rod wedges in a knee joint and I’m dragged along as it stumbles back under Kayla’s ferocious onslaught.

  It stops and I slam into the leg. Still I hang on, dragging, pivoting, searching for leverage. I brace my feet against what passes for its shin, heave. Something gives beneath my body weight. A spray of black fluid. A stumbling step. The knee gives, and my feet hit the ground.

  I wrench my rod free as the Uhrwerkmänn comes down. The point glistens in the flickering firelight of the battle. I upend it, shove it up with all my might.

  The point snags in a crack in the tumbling torso. Whether it’s a natural seam or one Kayla hacked into its body I don’t know. I don’t have time to find out. I dance back, out of the reach of descending death, and watch as the thing’s bulk drives the rod to the floor and then deep into its chest cavity like a nail coming home. The Uhrwerkmänn twitches once, twice, lies still.

  Kayla slides off its back, lands, follows my gaze to where the tip of the rod is still visible poking from a crack in its chest.

  “Fine,” she says. “We’ll call that one feckin’ fifty-fifty all right. You were lucky.”

  “This is a competition?” Kayla’s enthusiasm for violence never quite sits right with me.

  A roar cuts off her answer. The felled Uhrwerkmänn spasms once more. It lurches up onto its hands and knees, scrabbling toward us. A flailing arm swats at us, close enough that even as I jump back I feel the wind of it sweep across my face. I land awkwardly, half-sprawl.

  Kayla lands like a cat, looks down at me. “Not feckin’ dead yet. Game’s still on.” And then she’s off, bounding toward it, sword held high.

  It swipes at her once; she rolls; a second time; she leaps, lands on its elbow for a fraction of a second, hits its back. Her sword spears down. She buries it to the hilt in the Uhrwerkmänn’s back.

  She’s adopting my tactic, I realize, trying to spear its inner workings. I’ll take some time to be proud of that later. Right now, I decide to worry about the way my weapon is stuck in its midriff with no way for me to retrieve it.

  Around us, Uhrwerkmänner roar and bellow. Something massive crashes to the floor not far behind me. Rogue shots boom overhead, stitch a series of craters in t
he cavern’s wall. Cracks spider out around them.

  What is this place? What is it buried under? And how bloody sturdy is it?

  Kayla stabs into the Uhrwerkmänn’s back again. It roars out a howl of grating metal, flings itself upwards. Kayla scrabbles for purchase, fails to find it and goes down. I scrabble for my pistol. With Kayla out of the firing line I open up at the hole I’ve punched in its chest. The armor is weak there, I know. And I get more than ricochets. I see ragged holes open up.

  Bellowing, almost screaming, the Uhrwerkmänn stands. In defiance of my onslaught, in defiance of its knee, which buckles sickeningly under its weight, but which does not give.

  I keep firing, empty my magazine, reload and keep on.

  Behind it I see Kayla stand. In the shadow of the curving cavern wall, the Uhrwerkmänner have dumped their trash. Mashed cardboard and wood chips are matted in her hair. She flicks something greasy and sodden from the blade of her sword.

  Another magazine down. The Uhrwerkmänn lunges toward me.

  Fire arcs overhead. Another crater, high above us this time. Dust and concrete chips rain down on us.

  I reload.

  Kayla lunges, slashing at the back of the Uhrwerkmänn’s legs. It screams again.

  Adrenaline makes my hands shake. Screw grouping my shots at any particular weak point. Bullet holes pepper the chest of the Uhrwerkmänn. If Kayla was sensible she’d duck. But, hell, if she was sensible she’d never have been recruited to MI37. Maybe that’s the problem with Hannah. She’s just too sane for this job.

  Time would cure her of that. If we had any.

  God, what am I doing here? Risking my life here? When I know what that means?

  But it’s too late. I can feel the end of my clip coming. Five shots left. Four. Three.

  A bullet hole opens up in the Uhrwerkmänn’s head.

  Its roar abruptly shuts off. It gapes, soundlessly. I swear I can even hear Kayla grunting as she hacks at the legs, somehow audible over the scream of battle around me.

  The Uhrwerkmänn steps backwards. Kayla dances out of the way. It takes another stumbling step. The last sporadic jerks of life as gravity takes hold. It slams into the cavern wall. The largest crater so far. Collapses. Dead.