AZU-1: Lifehack

by Joseph Picard

  They started down the street, and got half a block or so, when silence suddenly surrounded them.

  “The bombing is over,” Alisia said, “We know Kris is clear now.”

  “Oh thank god,” Regan said, “I know my loathed ones are safe.”

  Alisia chuckled softly, and started looking around. In view there were a dozen or so zombies on the ground, and they were all starting to get up. “Ok, let’s conserve ammo unless they take notice of us,” Alisia whispered, “No sense in causing a fuss before we have to.”

  Regan nodded, but held her P90 close nonetheless.

  The small mob didn’t seem to care about them, more preoccupied with a nearby crater.. Walking to it, stumbling on the rubble, one falling in.

  “I see they’re still in total idiot mode,” Regan said, “I guess that means we weren’t detected....?” Regan was trying hard to not let the city get to her. It looked a lot like the early days in Autar. The blood was everywhere. And fresh. She had seen it through the ‘Reggie’ zombie before, it was quite a different thing to actually be here.

  A few blocks later, a creature about the size of a bull, made of bodies, walked into view. It did notice them. Its four legs were each made of several arms, twisted together like pipe cleaners. The rest of its mass was harder to identify, but it was definitely human parts. Upon its massive shoulders, there was no head, but a generic, plastic cartoon mask stuck on the front.

  On seeing Alisia and Regan, it split into two parts; front and back. The two sections each formed a third leg out of donations from the other two legs they had. Once they gained their balance the two ‘tripods’ began running towards the girls.

  “Oh, screw this bull.” Regan said. Alisia smirked as they both took aim. Alisia took two legs out on the slightly larger one with the mask, and it fell to the ground, rolling a bit.

  Meanwhile Regan had only gotten one of the legs of the little one, and it still managed to charge fast. Regan sidestepped around a parking sign then grabbed onto the post to leverage a kick to the side of the beast. It toppled over towards Alisia, and she stepped out of the way easily.

  The two halves of the bull squirmed comically, trying to right themselves. “Should we finish them?” Regan asked.

  Alisia debated it in her mind. They could just keep going and keep an eye out behind them, but she decided it was an unnecessary risk. “Let’s just liberate them from their working limbs.” So they shot apart the three remaining legs. Splintered and bloody remains of people’s arms twitched beside the revolting masses. “I hate my job.”

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 63: 0,0

  ~~~~~

  The ‘bull’ was not the first ‘abomination’ either of them had seen, but it wasn’t to be the last by a long shot. As they passed block after block, they regularly ran into creations made from bodies. These abominations were all faster and bigger than normal zombies.

  The largest was a five meter tall human shape, but the most creative was a meter wide crab. Luckily none of them put up a lot of fight. Slowing them down often took a good deal of ammo however, since some of them had very thickly designed legs. Hollow points work miracles, but sometimes you need a few extra miracles at a time.

  The compass was no longer truly useful. After the last EMP pulse went off, it just stayed fixated on the wrong direction relative to north. With a little sense of direction, they managed to stay on course.

  Then they saw something unexpected.

  A clean street.

  Not clean as if the killings had simply not stained it. Not clean as if no bombs had landed here.. but clean. The kind of clean you could eat off of.

  The street and the surrounding buildings were all a smooth, shining marble. Except that the marble seemed to be composed of random colours and patterns not typical to marble. The shape of things were different too.

  The street itself was perfectly flat with no curb where the sidewalk should be. No lamp posts or parking meters, no fire hydrants, not even seams where you might expect them.

  Regan looked around at the buildings. They were similarly lacking geometric detail. “Using nanites to reshape things? From the colours, I’d guess he used whatever was laying around. Geez, I thought Autar looked clean when it was new... That was creepy in its own way... but this...”

  “He’s...” Alisia squinted, and tried to come up with some reasoning to it. “Making a home for himself?”

  “Pfft... I always figured he wanted to remake the world in his vision,” Regan said, “But I somehow figured it would involve more... uh.. bodies and blood and stuff...” Was it quieter here, or did it just seem that way?

  They kept walking, finding that the ‘clean zone’ went for farther than they could see. The next intersection revealed that this ‘cleanliness’ had spread in either direction as well. Ever since entering the clean zone, they hadn’t run into any zombies or abominations.

  “So.. wait a sec, he’s a moron.” Alisia said. “If he is creating a home... this is a dumb place to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well... he’s operating on whatever power reserves he found in the city when he took it over. Outside power’s been cut, and there’s no significant means to generate power in Meston. He’s also gotta be sucking up a lot with that EMP.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. Call this place a rough draft.” A familiar, feminine, but unwelcome voice came from behind them. Regan and Alisia swung around to see ‘Erika’.

  “You’re surprised? I can’t blame you. This body got pretty badly messed up in my fight with those zombies you guys hijacked.. fun move, by the way… But I fixed her up. I kinda like her. I’m not sure why.” Erika held her arm out in front of her, and through Erika’s eyes, Erebus studied the frail flesh. “It’s not like I knew her, or for that matter, have any sexual desires about her body, since I don’t have such human wants anymore. In fact, I’m starting to lose sight of why humans are needed at all, now.”

  Regan gritted her teeth, and checked her aim. “Leesh’... is there any reason we’re not shooting her?”

  Before Alisia could reply, Erika interrupted. Her voice now sounded more and more like the voice they knew as Erebus. “Regan!” he shouted as if he just noticed her. “Oh, did you know that I remember you? From even way back when. I remember your brother now, too. Logs from the Autar A.I. told me he didn’t do so well. I..”

  Regan hollered “Shut up!”, and prepared to fire. Before she pulled the trigger, Erika convulsed as if being shot. Blood splattered back, and little bits of flesh went flying, all in relative silence except for Erebus’ mocking gasps of pain.

  Erika collapsed on the clean ground, nearly in pieces, blood spreading around her. Her face was still in tact, tilted to the side, eyes aglaze.

  Regan and Alisia looked around. “I didn’t hear any gunfire.” Alisia said. “Or even any ricochets... or anything like that... She... he... did it to himself?”

  “Oh,” Erika’s face spoke, only her mouth moving, “Sorry, I skipped ahead I think. But this is more or less what you were gonna do to me, right? I mean, I’ve seen it happen to enough zombies to know how it goes.”

  Alisia walked over to Erika and looked down at her face. A face that used to belong to a lovely, innocent young lady. She looked deeper, and saw Erebus staring back at her. “Jonathan.. your lack of a human body is the least of the reasons that you’re inhuman.” She fired a few rounds and shattered Erika’s face, just so Erebus could not use it to speak anymore. At least not for a while.

  “We still have a job to do here,” Alisia said, patting Regan’s shoulder. “Let’s get moving.”

  It only took a minute of walking before the eerie quiet and cleanliness began to gnaw at them again.

  “I love you.” Alisia said, eyes still on the road ahead.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Just thought I’d repeat it.”

  Regan raised an eyebrow. “Is this some kinda ‘I don’t expect to live, so I’m getting my feelings off my ches
t’ thing? Cuz I don’t plan on let-“

  “Nah,” Alisia interrupted, “It was just too friggin quiet.”

  Regan nodded. “Ah. Well then, ditto. In fact, for that matter.. “

  Regan stopped short. She spotted something unusual as they entered an intersection. To the left, the next intersection was round instead of square, and much bigger then normal, nearly a block wide itself.

  The surrounding buildings looked like they had been pressed back like putty to make room for this space. Centered in this round intersection was the framework of a dome, large enough to encircle several houses. It was seamless, and made of the same material as the streets.

  The supports were about a meter wide each, reaching up in a hexagonal pattern, leaving gaps about eight meters wide.

  Regan and Alisia approached the outer edge of the dome cautiously while checking to make sure they both had full clips.

  When they got about twenty meters from it, they could see a gap in the ground slightly less than a meter wide. This gap ran along the perimeter of the dome like a moat, just inside the supports. It was filled with blood and indistinguishable pieces of gore.

  Scattered throughout the dome, there was a variety of debris. Some seemed like random wreckage. A burnt out car, raw pieces of building somehow avoided being used in the strange material, and things of that nature. Towards the middle there was a field of what looked like dead people stuck part way in the ground.

  “They’re all Erikas.” Alisia said. True enough; a magnified view revealed that forty or so Erikas littered the middle area. None of them were moving, and all of them were stuck in the ground to some degree. Most were complete only to about the ribcage area. A couple of them were as far developed as the knees or so. Looking closer, there were some that were merely faces on the ground.

  Some had deformities of various kinds, but all were as expressionless as a corpse.

  Most importantly, in the very middle was a metal object about the size of two large cars stacked on top of each other. Dull green and boxy, with a sprinkling of minor details, like maintenance hatches and vents.

  “And there’s our puppy.” Alisia said softly. The tightpulse generator was bigger than it looked in its files. Some kind of large, shielded conduit came out of it, immediately bending down into the ground. Near the other end of the generator was an indistinguishable little wad of electronics hooked up to what looked like a wooden child’s toy.

  The toy had a glass window that let you see inside. There was a small set of little ramps and a four centimeter metal ball inside.

  Alisia kept her distance from the edge of the dome and its gore-filled moat while she gave another quick look around. Alisia broke radio silence. After all, Erebus must know where they were by now.

  “One bomb, please. Anywhere.” She transmitted, then shut her comm down.

  A few moments passed, and a sonic boom cracked in the sky.

  A few moments later, the tightpulse made a sudden, short, loud, deep hum. At the same time, the little wooden toy flipped over.

  An explosion was heard some distance away. Then everything was silent, except for the toy. The steel ball had been flipped to the top, and it clacked its way down the little slides. When the ball reached the end a second or two later, it struck a little button that Alisia had not previously noticed. An identical button sat on the other end of the toy.

  “Alright. That explains a little.” Alisia said.

  Regan tilted her head. “Fuhhh?”

  “Well, Erebus has to shut down all his nanites before the pulse, or they get fried. Problem is, he’s just a program now too... he has to shut himself down too.. So how does he start up again?”

  “Um.. some kind of timer...?”

  “Yeah, fine, but any kind of electronic timer would get fried too.. remember my watch?”

  “So.. he’s using the time it takes that ball to fall down....?”

  “To hit his restart button. Let’s take his toy.”

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 64: One Shot

  ~~~~~

  Regan looked at the bloody trench around the dome’s perimeter. “We can jump that.” Alisia nodded at Regan, and they began running towards the gap. Almost immediately, the moat of gore began to move. “Aw hell!” They stopped a couple meters before the gap, and backed off.

  The moat of gore rose up inside the dome frame, filtering the sunlight into a sickly dark red shadow. It seemed at first that it was trying to coat the inside of the dome, but soon structure began to emerge. Pieces came out, riding the bloody ooze; smaller bones forming larger structures... ribs, limbs...

  “Are... are those wings?” Alisia asked. They were. From the far end of the moat, as most of a body assembled closer by, two large bony wings assembled. Between these supports spanned translucent sheets of leather, human skin, dripping blood on the floor below. The combined wingspan was around half the diameter of the dome.

  “Dammit, let’s not just watch, spread out and shred it!” Alisa broke left, Regan right, firing into the forming musculature that was growing around the huge skeletal structure. Firing near-constant streams as they moved, some of the rounds ricocheted off the supports of the dome.

  A horned skull the size of a small car assembled from bone pieces still being supplied by the flowing gore. No questioning now, it was a dragon. Bone and muscle but no skin except for the thin, translucent, flowing layer of blood, which still streamed from the moat. Alisia yelled over to Regan. “That idiot! Making a flying monster inside a giant cage.”

  “Are the bullets doing any good here?” Regan yelled back. The flow of gore which coated it seemed to be very good at quickly repairing damage. Bits that fell off onto the ground just crawled like a worm back to the moat to be fed back to the beast’s supply.

  “WHO DARES DISTURB MY SLUMBER!?” The dragon’s voice was a distorted version of Erebus, being piped out through a speaker in the dragon’s skull.

  “Idiot!” Regan yelled, redirecting her fire to the skull, smashing off some sections. Regan’s rage wasn’t terribly productive. The pieces that broke off were already flowing back into place, but Alisia saw this as a good enough distraction. The two of them had traveled far enough apart that the dragon Erebus’ focus would be away from her if Regan kept attacking.

  Alisia jumped the moat and started running towards the tightpulse and its reset toy. A piece of indistinguishable gore that had fallen from the dragon grabbed onto her ankle, causing her to trip.

  Alisia suddenly found herself flat on the ground, in front of one of the partially completed Erikas, staring into its dead eyes. This close, she could see that it was moving it’s lips a little, as if talking to itself silently. Choking down a wave of panic, she checked her own leg. The gore blob had moved on. Its senseless programming had already realized that hanging onto Alisia was taking it the opposite direction from its destination moat. Alisia jumped to her feet and got running again.

  Regan was fairly close to the dome. Erebus could potentially reach her, but Regan was using the dome’s supports as obstacles to the Erebus dragon’s grasping claws. “Fucking moron!” She yelled while quickly swapping yet another clip of ammo. Erebus was getting a little frustrated. The skull aimed itself at Regan and opened its mouth enough to reveal a metal nozzle with a little blue flame in front of it. “Oh, BULLshit!” Regan quickly ducked behind one of the dome’s supports in time to shield herself from a flood of ‘dragon breath’.

  Alisia only saw fire where she knew Regan had been. “Regan!” Erebus turned around to look at Alisia. Safe for a moment, Regan peeked out and waved at Alisia. Alisia turned on her comm just long enough to yell into it; “Bombs! Now! Lots!”

  Erebus cursed himself. He’d been following the wrong target, and to make things worse, his fire breath gimmick didn’t turn out to be such a good idea. Sure, it looked great, but he had accidentally cooked five meters worth of the moat, and the nanites in it. Time to go take care of that redhead. He pushed himself off with his back legs and s
oared across to Alisia, grabbing her easily in his front claw as he landed.

  An all-too familiar sonic boom cracked overhead.. and another, and another. Dammit. He squeezed Alisia tightly before having to shut down for the pulse.

  Alisia groaned as the large bony fingers seemed to want to crush her, but before Regan could scream her name, the grip relaxed, the hand starting to ‘melt’. Below her somewhere, she heard the toy attached to the tightpulse flip over and the low sound of the pulse firing as the ball knocked its way down the slides. That damned toy was so close, yet so far.

  The ball hit the bottom and the grip strengthened again as Erebus regained consciousness. Air being squeezed out of her, Alisia called out to Regan as more sonic booms fired overhead. “Can you get it??” Fire began to flood towards her face and stopped just short, the grip relaxing again. Wondering if she had any eyebrows left, Alisia heard the tightpulse fire again. She tried to get free in the few seconds she had, but the lifeless grip was still very stiff.

  She got a foot up to try to push a bony finger away as the grip began tightening again. She heard a single shot being fired. The flame thrower in Erebus mouth warmed up once more as sonic booms cried out again.

  “Goodbye Jonathan!” Regan’s voice came melodic and gleeful.

  Before he had to shut down again to protect himself from the tightpulse, Erebus turned his head to look at Regan. She was just standing there, smiling, hands behind her back, holding her P90. Crazy bitch. Erebus’ world grew black again.

  Alisia felt the grip go loose, and some distance away, Regan’s laughter could be heard. Alisia stopped struggling, realizing that the time had come and gone for Erebus to reawaken. The dragon continued to melt, setting a cautious Alisia down on her feet gently. The bony hand came apart around her.