The Neuromorphs

by Dennis Meredith

  “We encountered two of the little bastards,” reported DeFranco. “We took them out. But I suspect there’ll be more.”

  Patrick joined Blake and Mencken at the outer blast door, where they listened for any telltale signs of activity on the other side. They heard nothing. Mencken closed the inner door, leaving them alone between the two.

  “No sound doesn’t mean shit,” said Blake. “It . . . or they . . . could be just waiting for anybody to peek out.”

  “Got to take that chance,” said Patrick. “Open the door.”

  Patrick positioned himself so he could see what awaited them outside the door, and Blake stood behind him, two Javelinas and a grenade launcher at the ready. With a faint creak, the massive steel bolts slid slowly back, and the door began to swing open.

  The powerful leg of an Arachnimorph thrust itself into the crack and a spray of bullets ricocheted off the concrete walls, causing Patrick to leap for cover. Blake barely had time to launch grenades through the opening door. They exploded just outside the door, sending a fiery burst of flame through the crack, but only causing the Arachnimorph’s inserted leg to tremble. Still it kept its position, holding the door open.

  “CAN’T CLOSE THE DOOR!” shouted Mencken, stabbing furiously at the keypad. The door had swung toward the closed position, but was still jammed by the thick Arachnimorph’s leg.

  They heard the scrabble of smaller metal legs against the concrete.

  “Infilmorphs!” exclaimed Blake, as Patrick, crouched behind the door, reaching around into the crack with the tube of a Javelina. He fired it, and both he and Blake took refuge behind the door as the rocket detonated in the tunnel.

  The force of the blast apparently drove the Arachnimorph back, because its leg shook violently and withdrew. The door continued to close, and the bolts slid into place.

  Blake and Patrick crouched with their backs against the door, recovering themselves.

  “What’s out there?” asked Mencken.

  “I saw at least two Arachnimorphs,” said Patrick. “Might have been a third.”

  “Whole shitload of little turds,” said Blake. “Remember, each of the big ones carries a load of little ones.”

  “Then how are we going to get past them?” asked Mencken. “And bring all those people.”

  Patrick took a deep breath. “Diversion,” he said.

  “And what would that diversion be?” asked Blake.

  “Me.”

  • • •

  “Hell no!” exclaimed Blake.

  “Absolutely not,” declared Leah. “Patrick, you’re not staying behind and opening those doors and—”

  “And how the hell do you expect to outrun those things when they come pouring through?” challenged Blake.

  Patrick shook his head with the certainty of his plans. “Distracting them is the only way. We can’t possibly fight our way through those Defenders, especially with people to protect. We’re out of snakebots, so we don’t have much chance of taking their legs off. I’ve got to draw all the Defenders to the north doors, so everybody can escape through the south.”

  “You still won’t be able to outrun the little ones, much less the big ones,” said Blake. “Besides, I run faster than you.”

  They were still arguing when a distant whine told them some vehicle was approaching the tunnel entrance from the cavern. They brought up their weapons, only to see James and DeFranco speed up in an electric utility cart with a cargo dump.

  Blake grinned and cocked his head. “Say, Cap, looks like our ride has arrived. That’s how we outrun them.

  “We?” asked Patrick, then turned to James and DeFranco for a report.

  “You were right,” said DeFranco. “The south doors are the freight entrance. There’s enough trucks to take everybody.”

  “Okay, you, James, Harmon, and Leah . . .” Patrick looked pointedly at his wife, with an expression that told her he wouldn’t risk losing her again “. . . take the people to those trucks. And take the ‘morph brain. That’s the key to finding the other replicas.”

  Patrick shook his head resignedly at Blake, signaling that he’d reluctantly agreed that Blake should stay with him. “Needle and I and Oopsie will stay here. When you’ve got people to the south entrance, we’ll open the doors and lure the Defenders in. And we’ll let you know when the exit tunnel is clear.”

  ”Cap, they’re going to be after us in that exit tunnel,” said DeFranco. “And when Oopsie’s gadget goes off that tunnel’s going to be like a huge rifle barrel, funneling the blast out.”

  “Yeah, so you plant C18 charges in the tunnel to collapse it. And load Javelinas on the last truck. We’re bringing the tunnel down behind us.”

  “Fuckin’ hooyah,” replied DeFranco, grinning through his beard.

  They all then turned to their assigned task, with Leah and the others heading off with the captives for the south entrance. The SEALs led the way, rockets and grenade launchers at the ready. They moved as quickly as they could, given that some of the captives were limping from their abuse, and the children were being carried.

  Patrick and Blake readied their escape vehicle, with Patrick loading its cargo bed with Javelina rockets and grenades. He didn’t bother with assault rifles. Bullets would be like annoying gnats to any pursuing Defenders or neuromorph drones.

  Lane had set the heavy black suitcase, which held the babynuke—a ten-kiloton miniature nuclear bomb—inside the nearest building, where it wouldn’t be disturbed during its countdown to total fiery vaporization of the entire complex.

  Then, they waited. Lane sat inside the building, poised for the signal from the others, while Patrick manned a post beside the keypad that would open the doors—perhaps to their destruction. Blake sat at the wheel of the utility cart, stone-cold, still, and calm, as SEALs are trained to be before an op.

  The echoing sound of distant explosions told them the fleeing group had encountered Defenders. But a terse message from DeFranco also told them the attackers were an Infilmorph and two armored drones, all of which had been taken out with Javelinas.

  Finally, over their comm, came the signal. The captives had reached the south entrance and boarded the trucks. And Mencken was poised at the south doors to open them.

  Punching in the code, Patrick triggered both inner and outer north blast doors to begin their ponderous thirty-second-long process of opening.

  Now would come the onslaught.

  “Oopsie, set the nuke timer, get out here,” he instructed, and received confirmation from Lane.

  “Set to sixty, Cap. On my way.”

  Patrick raced to the utility cart and took up his firing position in the rear seat, just as Oopsie Lane appeared, leaping into the seat beside Blake. Blake accelerated the cart down the interior corridor to a corner where they could see the doors.

  “Oopsie, was that sixty minutes or sixty seconds?” cracked Blake, as they sat waiting.

  “Like I said, I got no instruction book. We’ll find out in about thirty seconds.”

  “Needle, wait for them to come through the doors,” said Patrick. “We have to make sure they’ve locked onto us.”

  Immediately, from the open inner door emanated the ominous thumping of massive legs on concrete, the scrabbling sounds of talons, and the deep whine of powerful electric motors. An Arachnimorph appeared at the door and trained its chain gun on the little cart. But before it could fire, Blake slammed down the accelerator, and the cart sped away around the corner.

  A fusillade of bullets blew chunks from the granite walls behind them, as they whipped through the cavern toward the south doors.

  “Hope this damned thing can outrun them,” said Blake, leaning forward in the driver’s seat, as if that would make the cart go faster.

  Behind them, two Arachnimorphs and perhaps a dozen smaller Infilmorphs skidded around the corner and took up the chase. Kneeling on the back seat, peering backward at the pursuers, Patrick took up a Javelina and targeted it on one of the Arachnimorphs. He fir
ed, just as the cart careened into a right turn. The detonation behind them told them it had hit his mark.

  But the rocket hadn’t completely stopped its target. The damaged Arachnimorph limped around the corner behind them, missing a leg, its body smoking, but followed by a fully functional one. A swarm of Infilmorphs skittered along beneath them. Fortunately, the little car had better traction than the Defenders around turns, making up for its slower speed.

  “Open the doors. Move the trucks out,” Patrick spoke calmly into the comm.

  “Affirmative,” replied DeFranco. “Will let you know if the tunnel’s occupied.”

  A grenade launched from a Defender exploded beside the cart, and Blake uttered a cry of pain. His RheoArmor had stopped most of the shrapnel, but one shard had penetrated a seam, embedding in his side. As his exosuit tightened to stop the bleeding, the cart swerved wildly, but he recovered and straightened it out.

  Only a quarter mile to the next turn. Two more Infilmorph grenades shook the cart, but Patrick pulled out the grenade launcher and fired back. The hollow thunks of the grenades erupting from its barrel were followed immediately by multiple explosions behind them that vaulted Infilmorphs into the air and slowed the Arachnimorphs’ progress.

  They reached the left turn, and the wounded Blake managed to whip the cart around it, quickly coming to another left turn, taking them briefly out of range of the attack.

  Ahead, they could see the waiting truck. Blake skidded the cart to a stop, and they leaped into its canvas-covered bed, to find James crouched, holding a Javelina missile.

  “GO!” shouted Patrick, taking up a Javelina himself. The truck lurched forward, gathered speed, and passed Mencken standing at the inner blast doors’ keypad.

  Before he could key in the code to close it, an Infilmorph scrabbled around the corner, leveling its gun at them.

  “GREG!” bellowed Patrick. “GET THE HELL ON BOARD! FORGET THE DOOR!”

  “No,” said Mencken, shaking his head, a grave expression on his face. “I helped start this whole thing. I’m helping finish it.” He began to punch in the code to close the inner blast door.

  “You won’t—” Patrick began to say, but he was cut off by a burst of gunfire from the Infilmorph

  The bullets ripped through Mencken, but he managed to hold himself up long enough to finish keying in the code. He fell lifeless beside the keypad, his blood flowing red onto the gray concrete floor. The door began swinging shut, as the truck accelerated toward the outer door and the exit tunnel.

  • • •

  In the tunnel, DeFranco had slapped the last of his explosive charges onto the walls and switched on the radio receivers. He would need split-second timing in detonating the charges. Too soon, and the tunnel would collapse on them. Too late, and the Defenders would make it through, still pursuing them. He knew no truck could outrun a fully functional Arachnimorph.

  The trucks holding the captives were already well on their way out the south portal, when the last truck carrying the SEALs sped out of the side tunnel, swerved right and slowed. DeFranco ran as hard as his short legs would allow and Patrick grabbed his hand and hauled him into the back. There, he saw Blake slouched against the side of the bed, his exosuit off, with Lane tending his wound. James was holding a Javelina, the bandage on his arm soaked with blood.

  “Looks like a damned hospital in here,” he said.

  “All you got to do is mash your little button,” croaked Blake, wincing from the pressure Lane was applying to his wound. “So, you just concentrate on that simple task, okay?”

  “Time?” asked Patrick.

  Lane checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes, give or take.”

  “Give or take?” asked Patrick incredulously. “Seriously, Oopsie? Give or take? How far do we need to get?”

  “At least ten klicks away to be out of the blast zone. Thirty klicks, if Pitbull doesn’t close that tunnel and there’s blowout from the detonation. It’ll be the biggest blowtorch in history.”

  “’Morphs!” exclaimed James, as bullets ricocheted around the truck and a grenade detonated ten feet behind it.

  Behind them skittered half a dozen Infilmorphs, their guns trained on the truck, and looming over the small Defenders, loped the undamaged Arachnimorph. It had been fast enough to make it through the blast door before the door closed.

  Patrick and James both took up Javelinas. Patrick fired the first. It impacted the Arachnimorph dead-on, making it stagger back, a gaping hole in its armor, two of its guns shattered.

  The too-close blast from the rocket peppered the truck with flying shrapnel, but the Arachnimorph and seven Infilmorphs erupted from the cloud of smoke from the rocket, still pursuing them.

  James fired the second Javelina, which took out one leg of the Arachnimorph. It rebalanced itself on five legs and leaped forward at full speed.

  Suddenly, the truck was out of the tunnel and in the bright mountain sun.

  “Now, Pitbull!” exclaimed Patrick, and DeFranco punched the detonator button. From within the tunnel rose a crack of explosives followed by the thunder of collapsing rock. A cloud of debris erupted from the tunnel, battering the truck.

  “Aim for the roof! Fire!” commanded Patrick. He and James each picked up the last of the Javelinas and both pulled the triggers. Two powerful whooshes marked the launch of the missiles, and in two seconds, they slammed into the roof of the tunnel entrance, blasting tons more of rock onto the road, sealing the tunnel.

  “Five minutes, Cap!” exclaimed Lane. “We need to get out of the line of fire of this tunnel! The blast could blow that rock out like a cannon!”

  “I’ll tell the driver,” said Patrick, swinging himself out of the back of the covered truck and climbing along its side, opening the passenger door and sliding in. To his utter surprise, he found Leah driving, sitting there barefoot in the cotton dress. “What the—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “I persuaded them that I was the one to drive the truck. Garry and Ainsley had to take the brain where it needed to be, to put out data on the replicas. And they needed Driller to protect them. And besides, I’m the best driver.”

  He shrugged and leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. The truck had raced through the parking area outside the mountain complex and careened down the curving road, away from the mountain.

  The nuclear bomb detonated, and a monstrous, heated hurricane of wind from the blast engulfed the truck. The ground wave reached them, heaving the earth upward six feet. Leah struggled with the steering wheel to control the skidding truck, as it swerved toward a cliff skirting the road. She wrestled the truck back onto the asphalt, managing to slam on the brakes to bring it to a safe stop.

  They leaped from the truck to look back at the heaving landscape of Cheyenne Mountain. The whole mountain had risen up, then collapsed back down. Avalanches of rock cascaded down its flanks, and a pall of dust rolled skyward. They rushed to the back of the truck, where they were joined by the SEALs, awestruck at the sight.

  “Guess you did set it to sixty minutes,” said Blake.

  “Guess so,” said Lane. “I flipped switches until the lights came on. And then I flipped some more until it started a countdown.”

  “But it could have been sixty seconds,” said Patrick.

  “Yeah, but the guy who gave it to me said ‘minutes.’ He read the instruction book.”

  “Okay, then, next time, you get the instruction book, okay?”

  Even after a week of recuperating from the trauma in the mountain—not to mention a nuclear blast—Garry still suffered a severe case of the jitters, as he drove up to the safe house. The sight triggered a cascade of memories of his ordeal.

  But he recovered quickly. Before, he would have just wanted to retreat back to his safe virtual world. But no more. Now, he felt a new confidence at being in the real one.

  He climbed from his car, and Leah opened the front door of the house, smiling. She looked much better than she had last time he’d seen her. Her blo
nd hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was dressed in beige pants and a white silk blouse. She gave him a hug and led him into the living room.

  Blake sat stiffly in a recliner, the bandages around his torso visible under his army-green t-shirt. On the couch sat James, a bulky bandage on his shoulder. The other SEALs lounged around the room, all holding beers.

  “You’re okay?” Garry asked Blake.

  “Yeah, the medic cut the shrapnel out. I’ve got it in a bottle.”

  Patrick came in from the dining room and shook Garry’s hand, handing him a beer. “So, what’s going on with the brain?”

  Garry took a healthy drink, feeling pretty cocky at being one of this group. “Jonas is still working with Homeland Security. But all the names and locations of the replicas were there. Big-time people in the military, business, government. They could have really done damage, if not given the ‘morphs complete control.”

  “But they got them?”

  “Yeah, and good thing. They all had the new OS, with the creativity and competitiveness algorithms. Made it damned hard to catch them. But the ones on the list are now deactivated. So, what’s next for you guys?”

  “Well, we broke a lot of laws,” said Patrick. “And setting off a stolen nuke was kind of a topper. But I talked to the brass, and they said we were all being pardoned. But we have to remain anonymous . . . which we’d do, anyway. That’s what SEALs do.”

  He was answered with a “Hooyah!” from the SEALs.

  “But what will you do? Where will you go?”

  Patrick laughed. “Well, for one thing, I’ve hired all these guys at Harwood Security. I’m still head of the western division. As far as anyone knows, I just took a leave of absence for some personal business. They’ll have plenty to do. There’s sure as hell lots more security work these days. People are pretty security-conscious. But we still have a couple of important things to take care of.”

  “What are those?” asked Garry.

  “Well, one is helping the families of Andy Green and Keshawn Cranston. They weren’t married, had no kids, but they had parents and brothers and sisters.”