Love, Death, Robots and Zombies

by Oliver Higgs

  Shit!

  Furiously, I load another bolt. Somebody had to have seen it. They’ll be looking for more. Still, I creep a few feet closer, light the next one under the cover of my blanket and take a crucial half-second to aim and loose. Before the bolt even lands, I drop back under the blanket and lie still, my jaw clenched, my heart in my throat, praying they haven’t spotted me. Nobody kills me, so it must’ve worked.

  An enormous bang rents the air. The music cuts out. I peek through the grass. It’s an amazing sight. The gate is on fire–not just from the bolt sticking into its side, but from the burning fragments of the drone, which has crashed directly into it. I can’t tell if the drone was struck by a sentry or if Starbucks decided to suicide it. Either way, the wood has been speared by burning debris, and now the undead don’t need their pied piper, because the movement of the sentries, the fire and the sounds inside Mudcross provide all the impetus they require. They’re swarming the gate, frenzied, clambering over one another like maggots in a barrel. The fire paints their waxen, bloated faces with a savage orange glow. Laser rifles cut through the crowd from above, shearing off limbs, burning dead flesh. The effort is woefully ineffective–they just keep coming. Some catch fire. They become animate torches, clawing up the wood toward the sentries, screaming silently in the flames, like fugitives from Hell.

  A laser singes the grass less than ten paces from me. I lower my head, lying utterly still beneath the blanket. Someone hasn’t forgotten those fiery bolts. The sentries aren’t the only danger. The sheer size of the horde is causing it to spread out around the main mass. Feet shift in the grass only a dozen meters away. If I stay, they may walk right over me. I have to get out of here, yet it’s dangerous to move.

  A ferocious crack splits the air. I don’t have to look up to know what it is, but the sound draws my eyes regardless. The gate and a large section of the barricade around it has collapsed, even in places untouched by the fire. The accumulated weight of the zombie army has pressed upon it like a massive fist.

  Inside Mudcross, all hell breaks loose. A river of dead flesh floods the breach. Even so, it’s some minutes before the screaming and shooting peaks. Most of the town was already indoors for the night; most of its residents are only just becoming aware of the disturbance. The town is populated largely by sentient robots, but they won’t be armored like Starbucks. Jarvis said the “R-strain” was carried by perhaps one in ten; even that poor ratio means hundreds of virulent subjects are now in Mudcross, capable of infecting robots.

  As the town faces its horror, I inch away. The slow-walkers are getting too close for comfort. I turn east, still under the blanket–

  –and I’m face to face with a legless corpse worming its way through the grass. It reaches out with a three-fingered hand. I’m rolling away, the blanket enfolding me, restricting me. I kick off the camouflage and tear the axe from my belt. A hand wraps around my ankle, pulling its owner forward. The other hand latches onto my knee. It’s climbing on top of me. I bring down the axe … too frantically; the blade only shears off an ear and almost thuds into my own knee. The jaws open, the face turns toward my calf–but my second swing cleaves sideways into its skull, and then I’m chopping furiously. The thing is mush by the time I stop. Another one-legged misfit nears, but it’s still looking toward the fire. I hurry to conceal myself again. Luckily, the sentries have already disappeared from the walls.

  After a moment’s exultation, that zombie has put the fear back in me. I’m shaky as I make my way back up the grassy rise. There’s a cacophony of noise from Mudcross. Everyone with a weapon seems to fire in the same few seconds–yet it dies away quickly. Only the screams remain, punctuated by scattered gunfire.

  If you thought robots don’t scream, think again. Their instincts are modeled on ours. They’re hardwired to feel fear; it helps preserve the illusion of ego. Yet this goes beyond any normal response. There’s rage and madness in those digital voices. I can only assume the R-strain is working its magic.

  At the top of the rise, I look back. An inferno consumes the barricade. It’s spreading to the buildings inside. This is more than we’d hoped for. It’s too much, in fact. The imprisoned slaves, ironically, are probably the safest people in Mudcross, being in a concrete building near the center of town. Yet even they aren’t safe if the ambient heat gets too high or the smoke too thick.

  Or someone deliberately feeds them to the zombies.

  It’s a terrible thought. I want to run in there and free them, but there’s no chance of that. We have to wait for the infected clear out.

  “Tristan.”

  It’s Starbucks, coming up from the west. He still carries the controller, despite the drone having been destroyed. He crouches on the rise beside me, surveying the town with a mixture of glee and anxiety. One of his gauntleted hands shakes my shoulder.

  “Good work,” he says. “Now we’ve just got to get them out.”

  “You think anyone will be left to stop us?” I ask.

  “They’re welcome to try.”

  We watch the town burn.

  No attempt is made to fight the fire. With so many roamers free, it can’t be done. With enough warning and weapons, the town might’ve been saved. By the time the zombies were inside, the balance between chaos and order was already too lopsided for organized resistance.

  There’s a water tower in Mudcross. The fire itself topples it, bringing a deluge that quashes the flames. In time, we retreat to the tree where my pack is waiting, and I doze off, exhausted.

  Starbucks rouses me toward dawn, and we return to the rise, armed for war. He kills seven straggling roamers even over this short distance. They’ve been spreading out from the town during the night.

  At the top of the rise: desolation. Mudcross lies in ruins. The remnants of the fire have burned themselves out, though embers smolder in the charred remains. At least a third of the town has been razed to the ground. The rest is scarcely better off and looks more or less abandoned. Roamers wander the streets. A large percentage have drifted off or burned up in the flames. Likely they’re already repopulating the z-line. Others were taken out by the residents before the latter were overcome. There’s still plenty left to deal with, however.

  We march toward the town, Starbucks with his sickles and a shotgun, I with my crossbow and a laser rifle. My senses are on high alert. My brain puts the litany on auto-repeat:

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know,

  By the name of Annabel Lee;

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  We deal with the undead methodically, stopping and killing them as they come, making sure there are no more in sight before moving on. We don’t want to get caught in our own trap. Street by street, we tackle the loaners.

  I was a child and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea, I think while lasering a roamer’s brains through the back of its skull.

  But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee …

  I’m watching for any living sentries or vengeful residents, but none materialize. Anyone lucky enough to survive is probably busy trying to salvage what they can. Besides, there’s no way they could know who exactly loosed this plague upon them. As far as they know, we just came to do business.

  We round a corner toward the center of town. A bronze robot is digging frantically in the center of a ten-foot crater, clawing the ground with heavy hands. We stop, puzzled–did he dig that whole thing? Even my mental litany pauses in confusion. His head darts up. His face is made from the same malleable material as Starbucks’. Rage contorts his features. With a banshee-like scream, he launches himself at us, muddy arms outstretched. Starbucks drops a sickle and goes for the shotgun, but my laser rifle is already raised. A red tracer-beam reveals the path of the deadlier invisible one. The laser swipes an ugly burn-line through the robot’s
head. He collapses.

  “The R-strain,” Starbucks says, monitoring the remains.

  “What was he doing?” I ask

  “Being crazy. You know what’s weird? The flesh-walkers must’ve left him alone afterwards. They knew he was infected.”

  We see the concrete prison-bunker toward the end of the street. I suppress the urge to run. There are still plague-walkers lingering ahead. We make our way fast as we dare, taking them out as they come. Finally our goal is in reach. The building’s entrance is unguarded, but when I try the iron door, it’s locked.

  “Echo! Echo, can you hear me?” I shout.

  “Not so loud,” Starbucks says, glancing around.

  There are voices inside. Questions, comments, disbelief.

  “Is that you, boy?” a gruff voice asks. It’s one of the caravan drivers.

  Starbucks is able to reach one of the high, small windows. He grasps the bars and hoists himself up until he can see inside. Cheers greet him, but soon he’s hissing questions that don’t bode well for us. I can’t make out the answers. When he drops back down, his face is grim.

  “He took them,” Starbucks says.

  “What?”

  “The Demon of the Grasses. Yesterday. Echo, Jarvis, Octavia, Milly and Jareth all left with him. The others don’t know where they went.”

  It takes me a moment to absorb the information. Milly was a shy, skinny young woman with brown hair and acne scars. Jareth had been her companion, though they’d mostly kept to themselves. Aboard the caravan, I’d barely spoken to either.

  “No. No, no, she was here. I saw her in the window,” I protest.

  “He must’ve come while we trawled the zombies,” Starbucks says.

  We both look around, the same thought plain between us: did we kill them? Dear God, don’t let it be so. If the Grass Man removed them from the bunker but kept them in town for the night …

  “They weren’t here,” Starbucks says, shaking his head as he looks around, reading my mind.

  “How can you be sure? Crom, we might never even know,” I whisper.

  “Tristan, there’s only one reason the Grass Man himself would come back for them. He found a buyer. If they were being sold in Mudcross, the auctioneers would’ve put them on the block, or the buyer would’ve come directly. The Grass Man would’ve already been paid. He’d have no reason to turn up again. But he took them from this bunker. Which means he found a buyer outside the town. Someone radioed an offer, perhaps, or maybe this was his plan all along and he only jailed them until he was ready to leave.”

  I want to believe him, but the fear linger. What if he kept them somewhere else for the night? What if he chained them in an inn until he was ready to leave in the morning–a morning that never came?

  What if we killed them?

  “He’d have no reason to take them from the bunker unless he was ready to leave town,” Starbucks insists. I’m still staring around in shock when the voices petitioning us from inside the bunker finally penetrate the fog of my mind. The rest of the caravan is still trapped inside.

  We can’t melt the lock because the door will likely fuse into place. The concrete itself is better suited for the laser. Starbucks tells everyone to huddle into a far corner. Then he takes my laser rifle and spends a while burning a small corner of the building away, cutting it at a sharp angle until the rifle overheats, then kicking and heaving the fragments aside until a proper hole has been made.

  The prisoners come blinking into the sunlight, joyful and astounded. They shake our hands and hug us and praise their gods. Starbucks is warning them to keep their voices down. There are still zombies in the area. I look for Echo and Jarvis and Octavia, even knowing they’re gone. I have to confirm it. The elation of the caravaners doesn’t touch me. I lean against the bunker in a desultory mood. Then it hits me.

  Byron.

  “Where’s Byron?” I almost shout.

  That snuffs some of their joy.

  “That bastard,” the burly driver says. “He gave us up. Guess you know that though, eh? We were fixin’ him. Fixin’ him good. Would’ve finished if the guards hadn’t taken him out. We boosted Cyn up to watch out the window. She said they took him just up the road to another jail, a white building–that it there, Cyn?” he asks, pointing.

  “Aye, that’s the one,” says another caravener, a small older woman.

  I’m already moving. The building is down a road we haven’t cleared yet, but my normal sense of caution is absent. The axe is in my hand. A roamer is drawn from a side-street. There’s a fierce satisfaction in splitting its head open. Starbucks is following, calling my name. He’s burning down others. Three more fall to my axe before reaching the building.

  It’s a medical facility for slaves. Healthy bodies must fetch better prices, after all. The building is largely untouched by the fire. The door is locked, but a robotic guard lies dead ten feet from the entrance, his body stomped into the mud, his head torn half-off. On his body is a key.

  The lock clicks open.

  Cots and tools and machinery. Otherwise, the room looks empty. No, wait–there he is, huddled in a far corner, his knees drawn up.

  Byron.

  I barely recognize him. His eyes are swollen shut, his arm is in a cast, his front teeth are missing. I have no sympathy. That part of me has closed its doors. He put himself here. Without his betrayal, we’d all be in Apolis right now. I don’t feel the hesitation, the conflict I might’ve felt in the past. It won’t feel like murder. It’ll feel like–punishment.

  “Who’s there?” he calls, feeling the wall beside him, climbing to his feet.

  I stand in front of him. He asks again with fear in his voice.

  “Tristan,” I tell him.

  His jaw drops open.

  “Tris- … Oh, thank God. Thank God … Where are the others?” he asks.

  “I know it was you, Byron.”

  He freezes.

  “What are you talking about?” he asks.

  I clench the axe.

  “Goodbye.”

  “You’ll never find them without me!” he says desperately.

  I hesitate.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Your girl. He took her, didn’t he? The Grass Man? And some of the others. I’m not sure which ones, but I heard her for sure.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “They … They would’ve killed me, I think–the others. But the Grass Man came. He didn’t come for me. It was just good timing. I heard some of the others being taken. Then the guards saw me. I blacked out. Woke up here. Look, it’s all a misunderstanding, Tristan. I had nothing to do with it! What on Earth happened out there?”

  “Save it. Where’s Echo?” I ask.

  Some of the caravaners have entered the building behind me. Starbucks is still outside, dealing with stray roamers. There’s an uproar when the survivors spot Byron. They crowd around him. One kicks him over. They want to finish the job. I have to yell for them to wait. The burly driver seethes with anger, his fists clenched and shaking.

  “Where’s Echo?” I repeat.

  “Keep them off me,” Byron says.

  “Where?”

  “The Grass Man has her. But I can tell you how to find him. I’m–I’m your only chance, Tristan. Just get me out of here, leave me some supplies, let me be. I’ll tell you. I swear.”

  The caravaners all try to talk at once. I quiet them, fingering the axe.

  “Here’s the problem, Byron. You’re a liar. I think you’d say anything to live another day. But this is the end of your road. Right here, right now. I’m going to count backwards from five, and if you haven’t said anything useful by then, I’m going to plant this axe in your head.”

  He waits until “one.”

  “I planted a locator aboard his sled!” he says frantically.

  “Nice try. Your locator was with the EMP device in the caravan. Besides, the Grass Man left his sled at the z-line. It’s of no use.”

 
; “No, no, his other sled. He kept one at each end of that tunnel–ask the others! I left the EMP in the wagon, yes. But not the locator. It was always with me. I had the transmitter and the Grass Man had the receiver. I got it from a guy in Boulderfield. He paid me, told me what to do. That’s how he found the caravan. But I kept the transmitter up my sleeve when the Grass Man caged me. I planted it on his sled when we reached Mudcross.”

  I look around at the others. Their faces confirm a second sled, at least.

  “More tricks, Byron? Why would you bother planting the locator when you were already with the sled? Trying to find yourself?” I ask.

  “I was hoping to escape. I didn’t want the Grass Man tracking me down again if I managed to get away. With the transmitter on the sled, I’d always know where he was.”

  “But you didn’t have the receiver. What good is the transmitter without it?” I ask.

  “None–unless you know the frequency, and you can find someone who can sell you a new receiver. I was hoping to steal one from a shop in town. It was a dim hope, I grant you–but what else could I do? I do know the frequency. What about you, Tristan? Know anyone good with electronics?”

  I’d spoken of my hobby in the caravan, of course. Byron’s hint of a smile is insufferable. It disappears when the burly driver, having perceived some change in the general mood, attempts to punch it off his face. I have to shout to restore order again. There are sounds outside too–we’re attracted more roamers, which Starbucks is still busy dispatching.

  “Keep the animals off me, Tristan,” Byron says, standing again. He’s not smiling now.

  “What’s the frequency?” I ask.

  “Yeah, let me just hand that over so you can kill me. I need assurances. I can’t bloody see. Keep me alive. We’ll go north, after the Grass Man. He’s sure to have gone that way. When the swelling goes down and I can see, I’ll give you the frequency. You go on your way, I’ll go mine. But you must promise now to leave me alive with a bare minimum of supplies. All I want is a chance. After all, the Grass Man’s your real enemy. Not me.”

  I pause, trying to think of a way around this.