I am Automaton 3: Shadow of the Automaton

by Edward P. Cardillo

  “You’re damned right he was there, and he asked me about you.”

  “Go to sleep, Darcy.”

  “No, really, he did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked where you were. He probably wonders why you never come out.”

  Dammit. Matt Brauer was asking where she was. This was one of the costs of being a dedicated iconoclast. She had taken a couple of classes with him now, struck up some small talk on a few occasions, but never had the guts to take it any further.

  The truth was she was afraid. Her mother, Brittany, and Darcy all accused her of being too serious. What if she was too serious? Matt seemed like a nice guy. He wasn’t a hardcore partier. He was cute as hell.

  She was afraid that, if left unchecked, small talk would evolve into politics and then she would go on one of her tirades, and the dialogue would quickly become a soliloquy. She supposed that was why she liked doing her podcasts. There was no one in front of her, no feeling self-conscious.

  But that was over now.

  “You know what, Darcy? Next time you go out, I’m coming with you.”

  Darcy looked incredulous, which was all the more comical in her inebriated state. “You mean it? You’ll really come out?”

  “It’s only Thursday. I’ll go out with you tomorrow night. Maybe even have a couple of drinks. Promise.”

  “That’s great, Elicia.” Darcy lay her head back down on her pillow and began to snore.

  Elicia got up from her computer desk and walked over to Darcy. She took her sheet and covered her gently. Then she turned off the light and walked back over to her computer desk. She shut down her computer and lay in her bed, wondering if Darcy would remember the promise she made tonight.

  It didn’t matter because she planned on keeping her vow. She had dedicated so much time to making Tronika a rock star that she had neglected her analog life.

  ***

  Fort Bliss Medical Facility

  13:07 HRS

  Peter came to in a white room with a one-way mirror, hearing the familiar blips and beeps of all kinds of monitors. Given all of his recent adventures, this was not an unusual way for him to wake up.

  He tried to sit up, but he was unable to move. He was still unsteady from…that’s right, what that fanged bastard injected him with. The memories began to flood his consciousness.

  He wanted to reach up with his fingers and feel his neck, but he was unable to lift his arm. He tugged and began to feel a restraint secured with Velcro around his right wrist. He tried to move all of his limbs but found them to be tied down as well.

  He began to remember the Black Hawk and Farrow…Christ, was Farrow all right? Did he make it out? As his mind raced with ideas and hypotheses, the door to his room opened with a swish. He was in a negative pressure room, which meant only one thing…

  Quarantine.

  General Ramses stepped into the room, and he wasn’t wearing any protective gear. Peter found this curious given all of the precautions that were taken.

  “General,” said Peter craning his neck to look at Ramses.

  “Major,” replied Ramses coolly.

  “What happened, sir?”

  “We found you in a dance club. You were incoherent.”

  “Farrow?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Which is more than I can say for you,” said Ramses imperiously.

  “Sir?”

  “When we extracted you seconds before the local authorities arrived, we brought you straight here for evaluation. You had narcotics in your system.”

  Ramses’ tone was accusatory. Peter had to explain what had happened without sounding defensive or crazy. Shit, if Ramses oversaw a platoon of zombie soldiers, he wouldn’t think a trio of vampire terrorists to be too far-fetched.

  In theory.

  “Sir, Kafka was there. I was injected with narcotics to disable me.” He thought about the bite. Surely the physician saw it during his evaluation, so there was no point in hiding it. “He…bit me, sir.”

  Ramses gazed upon Peter stone faced. “So, you botch yet another mission, lose more men, draw the attention of the Mexican authorities to our operations, we find narcotics in your system, and you try to explain it all away with fantastical explanations?”

  “But, sir, he did bite me.”

  “Yeah, and your dog ate your homework. Not to mention, you let your brother get away yet again. Do you think I’m stupid, Major Birdsall?”

  “Sir?”

  “It does not escape my attention that every step of the way, when we get close to taking out your brother, there you are getting in the way.”

  Peter was speechless…almost. “Sir, with all due respect, if the army hadn’t tried to kill him we wouldn’t be in—”

  “Oh, that’s rich. It was your responsibility to keep your brother out of trouble.”

  “Sir, we didn’t even understand what was happening to him. We still don’t.”

  “And thanks to you, Major Birdsall, we will never get the chance. I’ve tolerated your incompetence for too long, lost too many men. You are to face court martial upon your convalescence, be it ever so speedy.”

  This was all happening too fast for Peter to process. Court marshaled. After everything he had been through? After everything the army put him through?

  The Boy Scout act no longer applied. He was pissed…had been pissed for quite some time. If he was going to be court marshaled, he was going for broke.

  “That’s it! I bled for this army hunting down dangerous cartels and terrorists. I herded zombies like a twisted Bo Peep for the cause because one of you bastards thought it was a good idea, only to have them turn on me because the army couldn’t control the traitors in its own ranks.

  “I almost lose my brother to those MONSTERS only to bring him back safely so you guys can murder him. But you assholes can’t even do that right, and now Carl is tearing the ass out of the army and this country, embarrassing YOU in the process.

  “Because that’s what you are, General, an EMBARRASSMENT. You’ve been rubbing elbows with the politicians too long, you’ve forgotten you’re a soldier. You actually think you’re one of them.

  “It’s just one dinner or benefit after another for you now. You don’t even know what’s going on under your very nose. My only regret was that I wasn’t there in D.C. when my brother, the good man you tried to kill, made you shit your pants in terror.”

  By the end of his rant, Peter’s fists were clenched, he was panting, and he had gone hoarse. Both men were silent in the negative pressure room, Peter’s words hanging out there in the filtered air.

  A cruel grin spread across Ramses’ face. “Thank you, Major. That will be all.”

  He stepped out of the room.

  Peter lay back sweating. He had always wanted to let the brass have it, and boy did they have it coming. To Peter’s surprise, it actually felt good. Cathartic, even. He was tired of being the good boy.

  These jerks created Kafka, let them clean up the mess. He was tired of it all, and as far as he was concerned, it was no longer his problem to try and fix. Even if the end result meant wasting the rest of his natural born life in a cell, it was a well-deserved respite from bailing an increasingly incompetent government out of the messes they made.

  Ramses shut the door behind him and found Colonel Betancourt looking at Peter through the one-way mirror.

  “Don’t you think that was a bit harsh, sir?”

  Ramses stood next to Betancourt, but Betancourt didn’t make eye contact. He kept watching Peter through the glass. Ramses spoke anyway.

  “The man’s incompetent. He’s botched too many missions.”

  “That man’s been through a lot, too much,” corrected Betancourt. “And, for the record, he’s always tried to do the right thing despite how we’ve managed to screw things up.”

  “So you’re defending him, Colonel?”

  “I don’t think he deserves a court martial.” />
  “I’ll take your opinion under advisement,” said Ramses a little too dismissively for Betancourt’s taste.

  “Particularly after you promoted him to Major and insisted that he remained in the field.”

  Ramses practically snarled at Betancourt. “As I recall, Colonel, you backed my decision to keep him in the field.”

  “I believed that he was more effective in the field than behind a desk like some half-assed bureaucrat…sir.”

  “And I suppose you agree with him about his brother.”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

  “Why not? You’re on quite a roll, Colonel.”

  “I do believe that mistakes were made. That man is not responsible for what happened to his brother.”

  “And we are?”

  “That is my opinion, sir.”

  “Well then, by court marshaling Major Birdsall, I guess I’m going to make one more mistake.”

  Betancourt turned around to face Ramses, looking into his eyes. “He’s been bitten, sir.”

  “Surely you don’t believe any of that hogwash.”

  “If you don’t, then why the quarantine, sir?”

  “What are you trying to say, Colonel?”

  “There are people disappearing, important people. There was the animal attack that you witnessed in Maryland, sir. You don’t really believe it to be an animal attack, do you?”

  Ramses didn’t respond one way or the other.

  “I mean, if it was an animal attack, then why did the supposed animal tear out all of the security cameras. The footage is missing. Major Birdsall is right. There is something happening under our very noses. I don’t know if it is OIL or something else, but this country is in danger.”

  If Betancourt wasn’t mistaken, Ramses was growling under his breath, low so that it was almost undetectable. And his eyes…there was something different about his eyes.

  Finally, Ramses spoke. “Major Birdsall is a liability. Once he’s out of the way, we can deal with this theory of yours, as paranoid as it may seem.”

  “He shouldn’t do any time.”

  Ramses grinned, bearing too many pearly whites. “Time? I wouldn’t dream of it, Colonel.” And he stepped out of the room leaving Betancourt to ponder their conversation.

  Betancourt turned back toward the one-way mirror and watched Peter thoughtfully. The last thing that man deserved was to be court marshaled. However, there was something different about Ramses, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  He left the observation room and walked down the hall to the serology lab. When he entered, he saw technicians disassembling equipment. Lieutenant Mary Keegan saluted him.

  “At ease, Lieutenant. I’ve come to inspect your progress with the serum.”

  “Yes, sir.” She seemed taken off guard, flustered even. But who wouldn’t be. The army created undead drones using THV before even coming up with a cure, which was irresponsible in her opinion.

  To add insult to injury, the army poured ninety-nine percent of the funding into the development of the drones, largely neglecting the development of a cure. However, it was not her place to point out such problems. She had to follow orders.

  “Well, sir, the project has been discontinued.”

  This surprised Betancourt. “What? By whose authority?”

  “General Ramses gave the order, sir. With the drone program discontinued, he saw no need to waste funding on developing a cure. All funding has been rerouted to…”

  “Retinal Gateway Technology,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. That is correct. General Ramses wants the lab dismantled and samples destroyed by 17:00.”

  This whole thing was, in Betancourt’s opinion, premature and short-sighted. THV was still out there, and possibly in OIL’s possession. Discontinuing development of a cure was foolish. He couldn’t question the general in front of Keegan, although he suspected from her demeanor that she was right there with him.

  “How far did you get?”

  “Well, the animal trials were unsuccessful in killing the virus. The best we were able to achieve was slowing it down, significantly even.”

  “But no cure.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Can I see the samples?”

  Keegan hesitated, obviously dubious about the request, given Ramses’ orders. He mistook her hesitation for confirmation that they had already been destroyed.

  “They haven’t yet been—”

  “No, sir. We still have them.”

  “Well, by all means, I’d like to see them then…and all documentation of their effects,” he added so it didn’t look like he only wanted to see the vials, which would’ve been an odd request.

  “Yes, of course, sir.”

  She led him to the back of the lab to a Plexiglas enclosed area containing refrigeration units. “They’re right in there, sir.”

  “I see. And the records?”

  “They’re back in the other room, sir.”

  “Well, by all means, go get them.”

  She nodded tentatively and left to go get the records.

  Damn, she was making this more difficult than it needed to be. He guessed that she felt the same way he did about all of this, but dammit, she was going to follow orders. Good soldier.

  The area containing the vials of serum required security clearance, specifically Keegan’s fingerprints and retinas. He knew the only way he was going to get a vial was to ask her for one. There was no way around it.

  She returned with the files on a memory stick that she slipped into a slot in the computer, which immediately called up the contents of the stick. “Everything you need is right here, sir.”

  Then she walked over to the containment area, submitted to finger and retinal scans, and opened the door. “Forgive me, sir, but I must oversee the breakdown of the lab, or the General will have my head. Can you watch these while I find a tech to dispose of them?”

  Betancourt suppressed a shit-eating grin. “Yes, of course, Lieutenant. Don’t let me prevent you from carrying out your orders.”

  She smiled, holding her gaze for a significant extra second or two, and left Betancourt alone with the vials. Good soldier. She apparently picked up on his ambivalence and decided to help him. They both knew the vials were to be destroyed anyway, so who would miss one or two?

  He wondered if he should take more. He only needed one, but what if they needed more? They needed to be refrigerated, and the extra vials wouldn’t likely survive unrefrigerated transport. One it was.

  He slipped into the containment area, pilfered a syringe, and opened a small refrigeration unit. He swiped one of the vials, removed the rubber stopper at the top, removed the cap off the syringe, and slid the syringe inside. He slowly drew serum into the syringe, emptying the vial, and replaced the empty vial.

  He closed the refrigerator door, replaced the syringe cap, and slipped the whole thing gingerly into his pant pocket. He slipped back out of the containment area as Keegan returned with a young technician.

  “They’re all yours,” said Betancourt, gesturing to the containment area and the remaining vials within. Keegan looked down at the slight bulge in Betancourt’s pants and then quickly averted her gaze elsewhere so as not to tip off the technician.

  “Let’s just say I’m happy to see you,” quipped Betancourt clapping Keegan appreciatively on her back and leaving the lab like his pants were on fire.

  He was quickly outside Peter’s quarantine suite, but this time there was a guard. “Sir.”

  “As you were,” Betancourt replied and made to enter the suite.

  “Sir, General Ramses made it clear that no one was to enter the quarantine suite.”

  Damn. Something was definitely up with Ramses. Why the sudden paranoia? It was like he was covering his tracks, but why? He thought of Ramses’ remark about Peter doing time. He wouldn’t dream of it.

  Suddenly, he feared for Peter’s safety, but then he regained his senses. There was no way Rams
es was going to harm Peter. Why would he do such a thing? Even if he were, it would be too suspicious. Wouldn’t it?

  “I have a few questions for Major Birdsall that would help shed some light on any possible contamination threats.”

  “I have my orders, sir. I am to let no one into this suite. Even you, sir.” He said that last part rather tentatively.

  “Lieutenant Keegan has just informed me that there is a definite contamination threat that may not be contained by a negative pressure room.”

  “Sir?”

  “The contaminant isn’t airborne. It’s radiation.”

  The guard looked at him quizzically.

  “Do I need to spell it out for you, Private? We have all been exposed. General Ramses isn’t even privy to this yet. I need to get in there on the double and find out what I need to know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you need to get your ass checked out right away for radiation exposure. Report to Lieutenant Keegan immediately, and then the physician.”

  “Yes, sir.” The guard saluted and stalked down the hallway to Lieutenant Keegan.

  Shit. He only had a few minutes before the guard would realize that his story didn’t check out. Ramses was going to hear about this, but he couldn’t act on it. The slippery bastard looked suspicious as hell already. He wouldn’t want to draw any more attention to whatever he was trying to hide.

  But one thing was for certain…Ramses would now know that he wasn’t to be trusted. He’d worry about that later.

  Betancourt slipped into Peter’s room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Betancourt walked right up to Peter’s bed, keeping his back to the one-way mirror. He slipped the syringe out of his pocket and popped off the cap.

  “Wait a minute. What in the hell are you doing?”

  “Major, I’m on your side.” He tapped Peter’s forearm and a vein readily revealed itself in relief against his skin. He threaded the vein and sent the serum into Peter’s bloodstream.

  Before Peter could protest, Betancourt spoke in hushed tones. “This is a serum to counteract the bite. It won’t kill the THV, but it will slow it down.”

  “I-I-I don’t understand.”