The DX Chronicles (Book 1): Not Against Flesh and Blood

by Brian Cody

  “They’re concentrating fire on municipal buildings”, Turrisi interjected, prompting Erik to shake his head.

  “Lamback, it looks like we’re at war!” Erik spoke. “There’s easily a hundred, maybe one hundred and fifty I can see_”

  “Erik, Erik, listen to me”, Lamback replied. “You guys stopped the aircraft?”

  “Yeah, yeah, we brought it down”, Erik replied as he looked to his teammates.

  “Okay, good job; you guys have done enough”, Lamback replied.

  “What do you mean? Lamback, the city’s being razed! We need_”

  “No, no, Erik, this isn’t a protocol issue. What can you do against an army? Fall back to the intersection of Fort and Wards—well away from the business district; I’m gonna hang up, and I’m gonna call the National Guard for back-up; copy?”

  “Yeah, but…” Erik looked to his teammates. “What’ll happen if_?”

  “Heads!” Erik spun to Bryen leaping from the ledge and pointing skyward. “Head’s up!” Bryen bellowed. Erik lowered his phone, and, at the same moment, one of those metal forms dove past, a sharp gust and a heated roar left in its wake.

  “Whoa!” Erik barked. He turned as that form sped past, but he spun back to Bryen, still pointing skyward. Diving from a mile overhead in angular formation, thirteen of those humanoid frames plummeted towards the road but then, after several moments, aligned themselves with that rooftop. “No”, Erik grunted as he pocketed his phone. “No”, Erik barked as three flashes erupted from that formation. “No, no, no!” Erik howled as three foot-long rockets dove for the rooftop.

  “Go!” David barked as he shot for the opposite end of the roof.

  “‘Go’? Go where?!” Nate exclaimed as the group turned.

  “Just go!” David proclaimed.

  They fled. Sprinting in an uneven line of varying speeds, from Turrisi’s human pace to David’s superhuman jolt, they rushed across the flat-top, looking to the ledge and the fifty-yard plummet beyond it. As David reached the ledge, the first rocket impacted and erupted; as David knelt and Erik stepped behind him, the second rocket slammed and detonated beside the first, and, as David lunged, the third crashed, augmenting that conflagrative pulse and sending a torrent of upheaving flames. As David bolted skyward, Erik kicked off to unloose a fiery burst, Bryen and Nate stepped after them, Shawn flung back his cape, and Turrisi jumped. He plunged.

  Falling past the rooftop as the shockwave whistled overhead, Turrisi descended past Nate—sliding by his magnetized hands and feet; and Bryen— skating along that vertical surface with only enough control to not topple. Turrisi, looking to his hundred-foot landing, recalling the suit’s capabilities, recalled his training, and motioned his body for the landing most likely to preserve him. He braced, but was caught.

  Turrisi turned to Shawn as Shawn spiraled to Bryen, grabbed him, then grabbed Nate and ascended. Rising past that scorched apex, Shawn looked southerly, towards the cessation of skyscrapers and his institution beyond it, but, he turned as a chute of flames dove before him and landed, and, watching Erik and then David land, he grunted and dove after them. As Shawn landed, he released Turrisi, Bryen, and Nate, and, decelerating to a jog, he turned to David and Erik.

  “Dave, what’s going on? Let’s go! Let’s get out of here!” Shawn exclaimed. He turned to Erik. “That’s what Lamback said, right?”

  “Yeah”, Erik gasped as he slid his goggles over his eyes, “but we’re not_”

  “Not what?” Nate interjected as he stepped to Erik. “Not in the military? Not equipped for this? Not sane?—probably all true! We need to get out of here!”

  “We can’t just leave them here to do this”, Erik retorted as he looked around.

  “Hey”, Bryen muttered as he stepped from the group and looked up.

  “This isn’t our fight!” Nate blared. “Remember the whole ‘lacking teamwork’ facet? You’re right this time! We’re not trained_”

  “Hey”, Bryen murmured.

  “Can we please argue about this when we’re not in the open?!” Turrisi blared.

  “Hey!” Bryen roared while pointing skyward. “They’re circling around!” he exclaimed as he pointed the twenty-six contrails rising northerly.

  “What?” David gasped as the group turned to Bryen.

  “They’re coming back for us!” Bryen howled as that formation, half a mile north and a mile overhead, deactivated their propulsion, flipped to point southerly, and reactivated.

  “Why us?” Shawn barked, while those machines dove onto the road and darted for them. “We need to go now!” he proclaimed while staggering back.

  “No!” David exclaimed as he shook his head. “No, they’ll follow us if we fly off!”

  “What do we do then?” Nate barked.

  “Go!”

  ‘Go’?!—As Erik, Bryen, Shawn, Turrisi, and Nate turned to David, David bolted. They turned after him, mouths agape and their postures draining of life as they watched David charge death headlong, but, within their shared gasps, and before they could turn to one another for confirmation of that horrendous sight, their bodies moved. They followed. Once more accelerating to their varied alacrities, they rushed for David. His pace had slowed. Though still superhuman, and though even Erik trailed by several yards, David moved within their perceptive abilities, his posture upright and his bounds appearing fed by a surety mysterious to them; yet, as they moved, a wail sounded before them, not mechanical, not inanimate, but reasoning and familiar.

  David, as those machines surceased their flames and dropped onto the road, cried out with visage gaped. Though he pinpointed scuffs on those mechanizations and though he watched the wires and sprockets composing their knees jounce with stress from their impact, his cry was maintained, while the beginnings of the one inkling capable of calming him—perhaps they’re not as…—was superseded by a more strident mania—Why did I do this?! His wail strengthened as the foremost of the machines, sprinting at nigh-thirty miles per hour, lifted its right and squeezed its fist, and his paces became more staggered and uneven as a burst of gunfire rushed between him and Erik.

  As David’s cry of terror erupted alongside of that gunfire, Erik, Shawn, Nate, Turrisi, and Bryen, once invigorated by his unyielding charge, found themselves confronted by his same horror, and, in unison, they cried out. The machines, as if reacting to their cries, spread apart. One machine slowed and lifted its left, where a rocket was extracted from its arm and launched past the group and at a parked car along the road. As the rocket erupted and geysered that car, six of the machines lunged at the group, and those six college students, watching half of the line plunge at them and the other half lift their arms and let fly, retracted their cries to expel their fear in a more strident fusillade:

  “Oh s***!”

  Though heard, the source of that cry remained unknown, with those six knowing at least one of them spoke it, or, perhaps, some of them, or, perhaps, all of them, but, with the machines then yards from them, their minds were too disheveled to search for the swearer. David, still crying out, wound back, Nate engulfed his arms in electricity, Erik enflamed his fists, Bryen flared his shadow, Shawn conjured a blizzard of papers, and Turrisi unlocked his safety. The machines landed. Spreading apart as their foes crashed around them and sidestepping as the shooting line opened fire, the six college students stumbled into a cacophonous sortie of swinging and flailing and evading.

  Erik pitched a blaze that engulfed one machine and detonated it. He thrust his arms, redirecting that fire and metal around a second machine and detonating it as well. Then, as that machine burst, Erik, looking past those flames to the thirteenth machine, reached for his katana, unsheathed, and spun. Welling the surrounding fire, he smoke-screened his gyration as the thirteenth machine fired its wrist-held gun, and, bolting at its side, he enflamed his long sword’s blade, stepped to the thirteenth machine as it armed a rocket, and cleaved through its torso. As the halved machine toppled and burst, it loosed its rocket along the street and
against a building, with the resultant wave scorching one of the machines rushing Nate.

  As that half-burned automaton stepped, Nate ran to it and, with a craggy and screeching battle cry, jabbed his left and his right with cracking and electrifying might. Launched back, the machine slammed into a second lifting its gun at Nate, and, as it drove that second back, Nate beamed an electric surge through both and caused them to glow, to seize, and then to erupt in short, sonorous pops, their red-hot debris spiraling and crashing at the feet of a machine charging Bryen.

  Bryen, as that machine stumbled over the debris, stumbled with it. He spun and roundhouse-kicked his right, with his shadow lashing a curving and serrated tendril that followed his leg’s path and sliced through the machine’s chest. As that machine, spewing flames from its gape, collapsed and burst, Bryen’s shadow nicked the leg of a second landing beside him. Bryen, as that machine limped, reared back and thrust his right, with a clawed arm bolting from his shadow, goring through the machine’s chest, and smacking it against the machine lunging at Shawn.

  Shawn lifted his cape and flared it across his front as that shoved machine fired its gun, and, as the words ‘no, no, no, no, no’ prattled from his lips, he shaped his paper barrage into a chain, and lassoed it around the machine’s shooting arm. Shawn pulled. The machine, yanked, armed a rocket, but Shawn, lunging to meet it, uppercut its gut to shatter it. Then, as he landed, he grabbed the dissevered, rocket-holding arm, and pitched it at another machine, dispersed his chain, and enwrapped both the automaton and the colliding explosive in a paper cocoon. Shawn tensed his hands, and the cocoon imploded, pressing the two items together and detonating the rocket in a pulverizing rush which launched its annihilated occupant in front of David.

  David stepped over the automaton’s bouncing portions as he sprinted at two machines, and, landing while the two machines let fly, he grabbed their faces, clothes-lining them, bowed, tackling them, and slammed, crushing their heads along the ground in two parts of flames. David, his eyes gaped, looked at his hands as those eruptions rose around him, while the machine on his right, still shooting, struck the side of one of the machines charging Turrisi.

  That machine, stumbling aside to evade the gunfire, aimed at a charging and bellowing Turrisi. Turrisi unleashed an automatic blaze, his cry strengthening with each nearing pace, but his gaze becoming drained as he watched his rounds bounce off of the metal hide. Turrisi pouted as the machine bowed, and he reared back and slid to the ground as the machine lunged over him. While looking to the second machine arming a rocket and hearing the first land behind him, Turrisi ejected his clip and grabbed two explosive rounds. He fixed the first. Spinning counterclockwise, he shot the first round at the first machine, armed, and fired the second. As that machine, landing and turning back, was struck in its head and chest, Turrisi grabbed a heavier clip from his vest, loaded it, and switched his rifle to manual. As the first machine was pummeled by the two explosive rounds, Turrisi aimed at the second machine—with rocket drawn—and fired twice at its chest, twice at its neck, and twice at its head, with the armor-piercing rounds drilling into the machine and battering its internal mechanisms. Inactive, it toppled, while its rocket rushed past a leaning Turrisi, and slammed into the still-standing first machine to drive it away and to detonate it.

  The moment that last machine hit the ground, the omnipresent racket which had marked the group’s sudden battle seemed to end. The sounds of distant destruction were still present, and the flames from debris and robotic remnants hissed around them, but, as those six glanced to one another, all standing while shaking and gasping, they found themselves alive, but, even more so, intact as they ambled, waddled, and shuffled towards each other.

  “Dude…” Bryen mumbled as he looked not at any one person or thing, but stared. “Dude…”

  “Okay”, Erik gasped as he sheathed his katana and lifted his goggles, “that wasn’t…that wasn’t too bad.” He jolted as the back of his leg struck a machine part, and he leapt and shot a rush of flames that engulfed the metal piece. “It’s okay!” he wailed as he spun. “It’s okay; it’s going to be okay!”

  “I gotta go!” Shawn wailed as he stomped and squeezed his fists.

  “What?” Nate muttered.

  “I gotta go! I gotta pee, man!” Shawn roared as he swung his hands. “I gotta get this suit off!”

  His teammates’ eyes widened and their already speeding hearts fluttered. “Shawn, no!” Turrisi roared.

  “Shawn, not here, you’ll kill yourself!” Erik exclaimed as he flung his arms.

  “I gotta go, man!” Shawn bellowed as he stomped.

  “Shawn, it’s suicide to take your suit off!” David blared as he thrust his arm, “just let it happen!”

  “I can’t do that!” Shawn wailed as tears streamed from his eyes.

  “Shawn, you got to!” Erik replied.

  “Shawn, it’s easy!” Turrisi proclaimed as he stepped forward, “Shawn, Shawn”, Turrisi barked. “Shawn, you look at me”, he whispered. Shawn slowed his legged motions and eased his shivers. His breaths became more drawn as he swung his head and inhaled the tears along his nose. “Shawn, you gotta let it out.”

  “I can’t”, Shawn muttered as he shook his head.

  “Shawn, come on; no one here will judge you.” Turrisi nodded as he stepped back, and Shawn, in turn, let his shoulders slouch as he groaned.

  “So…” Erik began as he looked to the short amassment of destruction, “is anyone injured or dying?”

  “No”, they all replied in a broken and muddled chorus.

  “Those robots were easier”, David began as he looked at his hands and nodded, “at least, way easier than the white one.”

  “Oh yeah, yeah, definitely”, Erik gasped. “I think I’ve fought normal people that were more difficult than them.” Erik then reared back and reached into the pocket of his leg. He yanked out his vibrating phone at which he had to stare in order to recall when during those preceding two minutes he had pocketed it, but then looked to the Caller ID. “Hey, Dave, we’re not dead”, Erik answered with a smirk.

  “I know…” David whispered to Erik before nodding.

  “What did you do!?” Lamback roared, his voice sounding audibly to Erik’s teammates, and causing Erik to lower his phone and select the speakerphone setting.

  “We just trashed a bunch of robots; that’s what we did!” David roared as he walked to Erik’s phone.

  “Robots!?” Lamback repeated, the sounds of him stomping occurring in the backdrop.

  “Yeah, robots! Tell that to the freakin’ government!” David retorted as he leaned over Erik’s phone.

  “Get out of there!” Lamback replied.

  “Wait, what?” David asked. “Lamback, didn’t you just hear_?”

  “Guys; David, Erik, and everyone within earshot!” Lamback began, “I’ve got a GPS lock on Erik’s phone overlaid with the radar image for air traffic control. If what I’m seeing on the radar is correct, there are now one hundred and sixty-seven signatures moving on a convergence pattern for your location.”

  “Wait, as in…” David murmured, his arms crossing as he stepped back.

  “Those robots? You called them robots, right? They were moving in haphazard spirals through the northern edge of the city, gradually tapering southward; but, a minute ago, they stopped moving haphazardly and started on a beeline for a target area which either includes your location as they continue or is your location. You’re about to be swarmed!”

  “Good”, David replied.

  “Wait, what?” Erik asked.

  “I’m sorry, either I heard incorrectly, or the word ‘good’ doesn’t mean what you think it means”, Lamback replied.

  “Dude”, David began as he stepped back, “Dave…Lamback, we just mowed down, like, fifty of them_”

  “Thirteen, Piekarsky”, Nate interjected.

  “Thirty of them”, David continued. “We’ll take care of the robots; you just move the evacuation further south.
”

  “I’m sorry, David”, Lamback replied, “did you hit your head really hard in the last twenty or thirty minutes?”

  “No, I_”

  “Yes!” Nate, Shawn, and Bryen interjected.

  “Okay, that settles it; you guys_”—Lamback’s voice was muddled as David grabbed Erik’s phone, pulled it from Erik’s hand, and, after a second of searching, found and pressed the ‘end call’ button.

  “We got this!” David proclaimed as he dropped the phone into Erik’s hand, “don’t tell me how, but I have a feeling_”

  “And a concussion”, Nate interrupted.

  “Shut up, Klinge!” David retorted. “Guys, listen to me; look at what we just did. Yeah, that jet was really hard, but those robots, in comparison, were a piece of cake! Instead of retreating and waiting for the National Guard to get here, what’s keeping us from doing this job ourselves, or at least putting enough of a dent to help out? We’ve got the gear, the abilities-and-or weapons, the street smarts, and the just cause! Who’s with me?” None responded; instead, David’s teammates glanced to one another as their surety decreased. “By ‘with me’, I actually meant ‘who’s not with me?’” Before anyone could inhale to speak or raise their hands for that statement, David stepped back and nodded. “Good; since no one’s not with me, it looks like we’re doing this.”

  “Uh, Piekarsky_”

  “No, Shawn, I’ll answer questions when I’m dead”, David replied. “Here’s the plan”, David began as he stepped back and lifted his arms. “We’re not going to let those machines past the intersection of Memorial Avenue and Park—that’s where the downtown development starts to end, and where, it can be assumed, the majority of the evacuees are perched beyond. Turrisi, Albert: you two hold up a blockade there, and you shoot, punch, rip, and annihilate anything that happens to get past and head for your location.”

  “Get past what?” Turrisi asked as he turned to Shawn.

  “The offensive formations”, David began as he spun to Nate and then to Bryen. “B-money, Klinge, you guys are ground control. You’re gonna rush into their forces and destroy anything you come into contact with. Meanwhile, up above, Garcia and I will intercept and distract anything moving through the air. We’re gonna keep those machines contained here, and we, one by one, are going to destroy them. Are you ready for this!?” David exclaimed as he pumped his fist, a radiant grin across his face. Bryen shrugged, Erik smirked while tapping his leg, Nate scratched his head, Turrisi sighed and rolled his eyes, and Shawn, after glancing left and right, raised his hand.