by Jack Quaid
Alice lunged out of the house and onto the lawn, her movements slow and awkward. Shelby darted aside. She was smaller and more agile than a droid designed to starch shirts and vacuum drapes. Alice was big and clunky and almost stumbled face first as she reached for Shelby.
“Mom!” Axel called from the porch. “In here!”
Shelby and Alice looked at the front door at the same time and they both had the same idea. But Shelby was faster. She could hear the big heavy thumps of Alice destroying her lawn not far behind her. Shelby dove into the hallway and Axel slammed the door in the android’s face.
“That was close,” Axel said.
Out of breath, Shelby rushed to her feet and wrapped her arms around her son. Tears ran down her face and she didn’t want to let go. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you sure?” she asked so fast there was no time for answers. “Are you okay?” she said again.
“Yes,” Axel said. “I’m okay.” Shelby hugged him harder. “Mom, you’re hurting me.”
She didn’t want to let go and she didn’t. Not until she heard the thump on the front door. Followed by another and another after that. Alice was trying to ram herself into the house.
“Can she get inside?” Axel asked.
“No, baby,” Shelby reassured him. “We’re safe in here.”
Then they heard steps thumping up to the door. There was a thud and then the entire door came crushing into the hallway with Alice right on top of it. The android stumbled to her feet.
Shelby turned to Axel. “Run!”.
Alice stumbled to her feet and patted the dust on her dress.
Axel hadn’t moved.
“I said, RUN!”
Axel went first, Shelby followed, and they ran down the hall, through the kitchen and slid to a stop at the back door. Shelby rattled the handle—locked.
She turned back and saw Alice coming.
“Upstairs!” Axel yelled.
Shelby flashed back to every horror movie she’d ever seen where running up the stairs never turned out that well for the heroine. Then she saw Alice coming at them with her demented metal face and figured that sometimes there was no choice but to run up the stairs.
“Go, go, go!”
Alice reached out and almost grabbed hold of Shelby’s dress. She barely slipped away and ran up the stairs only steps behind Axel. There were five bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second floor but Shelby didn’t know which one to hide in. Axel had already disappeared into his bedroom and Shelby figured that his room was as good as any as she slammed the door shut.
“You have any weapons in here?”
“I’m seven,” Axel said.
“Where’s your Little League bat?”
He pointed to the closet and Shelby flung the doors open. The bat was leaning against the corner. She pulled out the wooden Louisville Slugger, holding it up in the moonlight.
“You don’t have an aluminium one?”
“Dad said you hit better with a wooden bat.”
Then Alice’s distorted, digital voice echoed down the hall. “You can’t run from me, children.”
Shelby looked at the door and raised the bat. “Whatever happens, stay behind me, Axel.”
Shelby drew in a long deep breath and slowly let it leak out as her fingers gripped the wood. She drew another breath and was about to exhale when she heard Alice’s footsteps stop. She was right outside the bedroom door. A moment later the door handle turned. The door slowly opened and the dark silhouette of Alice appeared.
“I’ve been looking all over for you two,” the android said.
“Come and get me,” Shelby said.
Alice stepped into the room and Shelby swung the bat. The first blow took off what was left of Alice’s rubber face, leaving her metal skull completely exposed. But the droid was relentless. It just kept coming and coming. Shelby swung until she was covered in sweat and out of breath yet all she achieved was to keep Alice a couple of feet in front of them.
As Shelby tired, the android saw its opportunity. In between one of Shelby’s swings, which had grown consistently slower, the droid lunged forward with its arms out, ready to grab hold. But Shelby saw it coming. She didn’t need to move much, just a small step to the right. The android had nowhere else to go, except for out the window.
Alice smashed through the glass with ease. By the time Shelby and Axel made it to the windowsill and looked out, Alice was already sprawled out on the concrete below, with her limbs all twisted at disjointed angles.
Shelby took a heavy breath and put her arm around her son.
“Did she have the Y2K?” Axel asked.
“Yes. She had the Y2K,” Shelby said. “And, I don’t care how funny it is. I’ll never watch the Brady Bunch again.”
Seven
Shelby leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor to catch her breath. “We can’t stay here,” she said. “It’s not safe.”
Axel took a step and got an angle at the street outside. “Let’s go to Dad’s.”
“We’re not going to your father’s.”
“But Mom, he’s got . . .”
“I said no. We’re not going to your father’s.”
Troy’s house was up in the Hollywood Hills. He was paranoid about paparazzi, stalkers and TMZ, so he had a fifteen-foot fence built around the perimeter and covered with flood lights, barbed wire and a state-of-the-art security system. It was more fortified than most prisons. He referred to it as “the compound.”
Axel peeked out the window, stepped back and tugged on Shelby’s dress. “Mom.”
“Not now.”
“Mom.”
“Give me a moment to think.”
“Mom!”
“What!”
Axel pointed out the window and Shelby stood up and looked out.
Alice was gone.
Shelby took a step back. She could have sworn her heart had stopped. “We’re going to your father’s.”
Packing for Axel in a hurry was easy. She’d done it hundreds of times since the divorce, when Axel had gone over to visit Troy. A change of clothes, a jacket and a toy car for him to play with. What to pack for herself for the end of the world was another matter entirely. When it came to this current situation, her first thought was to pack practically, but Shelby didn’t exactly have a practical wardrobe. If she wanted a last minute outfit to the MTV Awards, she had it. An outfit for the Academy Awards, she had that too. An impromptu dinner with Matthew Perry, done. But an outfit for the end of the world was going to take some time. She pulled out a pair of Levi’s, a white tank top from Calvin Klein and a leather jacket. She figured that was badass enough for the apocalypse.
When they were ready to hit the road, Shelby gripped the bat in one hand and took Axel by the other and then quietly led him down the stairs. She could see all the way down the hall, through the broken front door and out to the dark street. The coast looked clear but she wasn’t taking any chances.
As they reached the front door, Axel stopped, scared.
Shelby kneeled down next to him so that they were at eye level. “There’s no reason to be scared.”
“Yes there is.”
Shelby gave it some thought and then shrugged. “I think you’re probably right. I’m not going to let go of your hand.”
“What if you do?”
“I won’t.”
“What if I get lost?”
She tried to think of something that would reassure him but no matter how much she racked her brain she couldn’t come up with anything. Then she saw Axel’s brand new sneakers with the GPS chip in them.
“I tell you want,” Shelby said. “How about you give me your GPS watch and I’ll wear it. So just in case you do get lost, I’ll know exactly where to find you. How does that sound?”
He undid the watch from his wrist and handed it to Shelby. “That sounds alright.”
Shelby tightened the plastic watch around her wrist and stood. “Okay, are we ready to do this?”
Axel
nodded.
“Let’s go,” Shelby said and they stepped out into the yard.
They almost made it to the sidewalk when Shelby felt Axel tug on her hand.
What was left of Alice had crawled her way around from the back of the house and now lay in Shelby’s rose bush. The bottom half of the android’s body looked as if it was broken and was just being dragged along for the ride, while the top half extended an arm out for Shelby and Axel.
“All bite and no bark,” the distorted voice croaked.
Shelby took a couple of steps toward the machine and lifted the Louisville Slugger high above her head. “Bite this.”
She swung down hard.
Eight
They moved slowly. They had no choice. Droids patrolled the streets in small groups and searched house by house. They were organized and ruthless with their batteries charged and joints oiled. The human race had been fools. Drunk, scared and caught completely unaware. Most of them, when they were pulled from their homes, did what they were told. Too scared to do anything else. And those who resisted were cut down in the street as a message to the others.
Shelby and Axel moved in the shadows. The ground they covered slowly changed from suburban streets lined with houses to wider roads with shops and a Starbucks on every corner. Shelby heard an engine and ducked behind the bulk of a bus shelter. The sound grew louder, and then a yellow school bus appeared at the end of the street. Shelby watched as it passed. Its seats were filled with the confused citizens of Los Angeles, while behind the wheel a school bus driver android smiled as if it were just another school day. The bus turned a corner and the sound of the engine faded with it.
Shelby stood and looked up and down the street. There was no movement and no sound. She stepped forward with Axel lingering just behind.
“Are we almost there?” he whispered.
“No.”
They took a couple of more steps.
“Are we almost there?”
“I said, no.”
And it went on like that for the next ten blocks. They saw droids, they hid in the shadows, the droids passed, Axel asked if they were there yet, Shelby said “no,” and they moved on. It worked out well until they reached Highland Avenue.
“CITIZEN. PLEASE-STAND-STILL.” The voice was clearly digital but there was something in its tone that leaned toward insecurity.
Shelby stopped and slowly turned around.
“CITIZEN. PLEASE STOP MOVING.”
It was a traffic infringement droid. The kind that rolls down the street slapping parking tickets on vehicles. It was an odd looking thing. Kind of like a small golf cart with a shoebox-sized square for a head and a small speaker for a voice. Nobody liked the parking droids and somebody at some stage had taken a dislike to this particular one as half its side was dinted in and the other covered in graffiti. What it lacked that the other droids didn’t was:
a) a weapon
b) a threat
“CITIZEN. YOU MUST COME WITH ME.”
Shelby laughed. “I don’t think so.”
She grabbed Axel’s hand and took a step onto a small flight of stairs that led to a local park.
“CITIZEN. YOU MUST COME WITH ME.” The traffic bot tried to follow but kept bumping its nose on the first step. His wheels couldn’t take the steps.
Shelby smiled. “I guess you guys never saw RoboCop.” She turned to go up the stairs but stopped dead after the first one. At the top of the flight were three police bots each holding rifles.
“Oh, shit,” Shelby said.
“You used a bad word, Mommy,” Axel said.
“I know, baby. But sometimes there’s just no other way to sum things up.”
Nine
Three school buses were parked side-by-side in the middle of Le Brea and all faced the same direction. The police droids had collected a few more stragglers and now Shelby and Axel were part of a group. There wasn’t much said on the couple of blocks that they travelled together, but when a man in silk pajamas standing next to Shelby saw the yellow school buses filled with people he sighed and said, “This really is an odd turn of events.”
A police droid pointed at the man in the silk pajamas.
“HEY!” He marched over. “NO TALKING.”
The man stood up straight and looked into the digital eyes of the police bot. In is day-to-day life he was probably a man of power. Like a studio head, a judge or one of the clerks at the DMV. Not someone accustomed to taking shit.
“Or what?” the man in the pajamas said.
The police bot raised the butt of his rifle and in one swift move swung it against the man’s cheek. He hit the ground and spat a tooth onto the road.
Shelby agreed with the man. It really was an odd turn of events. She took a step and joined the end of the line with Axel, and they were herded by guards into the last bus in the line. She found a couple of spare seats and slid into the worn vinyl bench. The bus was fully automated—they’d all been fully automated since 1991—but this was an older model with a humanoid droid built in behind the wheel to make kids comfortable traveling in a bus without a driver.
Axel clutched Shelby’s hand as the driver closed the doors and turned the engine on. A moment later they were traveling in convoy down the road.
Everybody was quiet and although it wasn’t particularly warm outside, people were covered in sweat.
“Anyone know where these buses are headed?” Shelby asked.
People shushed and gave her dirty looks.
Gunfire cracked through the air. It was nice and close.
Everybody leaned toward the middle aisle of the bus so they could see out the windshield. But the mayhem was still a couple of blocks away and all they could make out were muzzle flashes. As they neared, the scene become clearer. The short bursts of gunfire were all directed on one target. Fifteen to twenty androids of various types, from battle droids all the way down to domestics, stood in a semi circle and unleashed hell with the machine guns in their hands. When they finished one magazine, they let it drop from the bottom of their weapon, jammed in another and kept on firing. Shelby peered through the gun smoke at the centre of all the attention. A row of military Humvees filled with human soldiers were being cut into Swiss cheese. The droids made Bonnie and Clyde look like pussies.
The bus drove past the scene. Nobody looked back.
“There goes our last hope,” somebody in the back row said, and he too was shushed.
For the next ten blocks, nobody said much of anything. They sat in silence and fear. Some of them sobbed, others silently cried, while those who didn’t know what to do nervously tried to put on a brave face complete with an awkward smile, which came off almost as creepy as the expressions of the droids that captured them.
Axel saw a little girl with pigtails in the seat across the aisle. She had tiny little scratches all over her face and hands. They weren’t deep and they had already stopped bleeding but they seemed odd.
Axel leaned over Shelby’s lap and tapped the little girl on the knee. “How did you get those cuts?”
The little girl reached for the bag sitting on the floor by her feet and pulled it onto her lap. Something inside was rustling around.
She put her fingers around the zipper.
Axel leaned forward.
She pulled the zipper back a few inches.
Axel leaned in even more.
The inside of the bag was home to the little girl’s Barbie e-doll. Her hair was a mess and the hard wires that made up her skeleton had been exposed through her rubber hands. It was those mean little hands that had made the scratches.
The little girl zipped up the bag. “I hope where we’re going there’s somebody that can fix her.”
“Mom?” Axel said with a slight shake in his voice.
“I know,” Shelby said. “Just pretend it’s not there.”
Headlights from up ahead shone in Shelby’s eyes. She squinted but when she saw through the lights her stomach dropped. An auto-car was barrelling dow
n the street. It was traveling on the wrong side of the road and coming straight at them. It swerved out of the way for a brief instant and then sideswiped a parked car that sent it back on course to go one-on-one with the bus.
Shelby held on tight to Axel.
It was all she had time for.
Ten
Shelby blacked out.
She heard the screams first.
Then she opened her eyes.
The front of the bus was a mangled mess of twisted metal with the entire front torn apart and exposed. The auto-car ended up in the storefront of a Best Buy with its wheels still spinning.
Shelby reached for Axel but he was gone and that’s when the panic set in. She pulled herself out of the seat and stepped into the aisle. People were bleeding and confused and somewhere someone screamed.
“Axel!” Shelby called. She tried to peer through the people that were moving around the bus, trying to get their bearings. “Axel!”
Then she heard it. At first it was faint and Shelby had to quiet her mind and focus to hear it again.
“Mom!” Axel’s voice called.
She scanned the bus, couldn’t see him.
“Where are you?”
“Down the back.”
Shelby pushed through the people as she made her way to the rear of the bus. Axel was up against the window of the last seat. Next to him was the little girl in pigtails and in front of them both was her little e-Barbie with a knife in its hand. Axel tried to swipe it away but the doll was determined and lashed at his ankle a couple of more times, each one growing closer.
Shelby lifted up her boot.
“No!” the little girl screamed.
Shelby knew why the girl was being protective. She’d probably never known a time before robots. She saw them as her friends and her carers. She loved them and was prepared to forgive no matter what they did.
But Shelby wasn’t so forgiving. She slammed her boot down hard. And then slammed it down three more times just to be sure. The e-Barbie lay on the ground, its rubber body twisted, mangled but still moving, still trying to kill.