Anatali: Ragnarok

by A. C. Edwards

  In seconds, the ball collapsed on itself and took its vortex with it.

  An unearthly silence was left behind, the falling bodies not even thumps in the vacuum. Jessica tried to breathe but couldn’t find the air. Gasping, she felt herself dizzied, then panicked. Ayla choked on her panting, arms and legs shaking.

  A rumble from the warehouse’s remaining interior preceded a blast of hot air from the filtration system, the one the FireBots had been working on throughout the night. As she inhaled her first breath in a minute, she’d never felt so glad for the robots’ placement of human life first. Ayla croaked a bark, suddenly quite limp in Nicky’s grasp.

  “Puta Madre!” Fiona screamed, snapping the silence. She tore at her cheeks with her nails, expression wild. Her eyes fell on Dillon. “You! Your friends!”

  He didn’t look at her. Dillon smiled, raising his other hand to a pod of displaced Dvoraks. There’d been far more than Shrine's vortex could capture. Small bursts of gunfire came back to life, though were accompanied by very human screams. One shuttle lay upturned on the street. The other struggled to right itself. She couldn’t find Carmichael’s, or its box.

  “Stop it!” Jessica yelled, crawling to Dillon. “W-We won!” Shrine’s sacrifice of grief had chased the feds away, or at least into disarray. They had a chance to run for it. Just a couple more hours. “Stop fight—”

  Something slammed Jessica hard in the face. She fell back hard on her ass. Her hand reflexively slapped over her left eye. She felt the wet heat of blood as she gasped for air, all of it suddenly knocked out of her again. She couldn't see, her world was just a wash of blurred gray between the blackness of squeezed eye-blinks.

  The clank of steel on steel brought her face slowly up to level. She focused on Nicky’s axe, flat up-and-down in front of her head. “N-Nicky? Did you h-hit—”

  Jessica gasped. A crush of pain overwhelmed her: it started with her head and blazed down her spine. She choked on the agony as she attempted something: to stand, to crawl. A cold tentacle wrapped around her ankle and flung her backwards. She slammed shoulder-first into the airdock wall. She looked up into an eyeless stare: a Dvorak, mouth-open. Jessica grimaced, waiting for its bite. It didn’t move.

  She closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Stop running. Wake up.

  Jessica coughed and raised her head. Instead of a grinning corpse she now saw a fluffy, white face. Ayla licked her cheek. Shambling Dvorak feet, some bare, some shoed, moved past them, not even pausing to take notice. Jessica touched her face, feeling again the heat and wetness of her blood. She tried to open her left eye: it was either swollen shut, or a mash of ruined flesh. She couldn't see out of it, in any case. Fury built in her head and heart as she saw one of Christy's darts on the ground with her good eye.

  Jessica swatted at it with her hand, trying to get her perspective straight. The thin dagger with it's knobby pummel must have hit business side backwards, thus saving her life, but taking half her sight. Bitch hadn't tried hard enough.

  Fuck all.

  Ayla’s fur went red from a pat on the head as Jessica struggled to a knee. Dillon stood closest, backpedaling from Fiona. His fist-sized ball of black had grown to a funny egg-shape. The feral girl launched herself at him, fists blazing red, only to rebound off his barrier. So much for that alliance. And from what Jessica had seen in the last day, his bubble was the best around—he would have nothing but time to suck more death from the dead. As many came, as many fell, now forming a carpet of bodies in their arena. What he was planning on doing with it was anyone's guess, maybe including his.

  Beyond them, flashes of silver accompanied the clamor of scraping metal and furious shouts. Nicky’s four, or rather now three remaining arms defended, his axe gripped as a too-heavy shield against Christy’s lightning-fast twin blades. Behind her, a black FireBot spun and circled with precise, if cautious attacks. Holly. Nicky’s girlfriend seemed to be awaiting one true opening in the artificial lifeform’s dance.

  It came at the cost of Nicky’s axe arm, severed at its tip. The axe skittered out of reach, though her friend launched out with another tentacle—shink. The limb flew airborn, cut away at the shoulder. With her back turned, Christy’s reverse-grip side-armed a strike towards his visor. The knife gashed his helmet, but fell short as her footing was yanked out from under her. Prone on the ground, the fed kicked away, heel pounding into a sleek ball of black muscle. Kahn’s teeth had sunk into her calf, chips of fang dropping from the pierced armor. He dragged her like a recently downed kill. She slashed down at his face while protecting her head with a spinning swipe.

  Nicky's tentacle wrapped her attack, halting it inches from the tiger’s ear. Holly's arms lashed out, wrapping her other arm, her shoulder, and her neck. With the girl still on the ground, Holly lurched forward, treads aimed to crush her head. Christy spun sideways; the tentacles slipped on her catsuit. Her light-blade twisted with her, cutting through Nicky’s last arm. She rolled over Kahn as Holly collided with her mate in a nasty 'clank.'

  In the new cloud of snow, all were obscured. Ayla ran into the blackout, snapping and limping off her bum leg. Jessica reached out, mouth wide. An aircraft’s whoosh drowned out her shout and her friend’s barks.

  ~ 55 ~

  Little Dead Girl

  December 1, 4124 — 8:18 AM

  As the cloud settled, a child stood just at the border of sight, mere feet from Jessica. Golden blond, one of her eyes were gone, the other was white; not a speck of blood dotted her porcelain skin nor her summer dress. The child's milky blue eye appeared almost natural, alive. She didn’t hiss; she smiled. Jessica fell back to the wall, grasping down for Bunny, for anything she’d lost.

  Including her mind.

  Not just a familiar face, but her own, as a child. The Dvorak reached out with one hand. Jessica scanned the blackout, shouting for Ayla, for Nicky, Dillon, anyone.

  Follow her.

  In a blink, the child vanished, but now something yanked her forward: a feeling in her chest as sure as if ice-cold fingers surrounded her wrist, pulling her into the snow. Rifle scraping the ground, Jessica bumped against a charred body; it moaned but didn’t turn. She stumbled into the crowd of corpses milling around Dillon and Fiona. The Dvoraks parted. Those black wisps continued to stream towards a center, bending around her, not touching Jessica beyond a passing tingle.

  Concentrated heavy artillery lit the dark swirl far overhead. Jessica could still feel that box. Beside her, from the sky, a body crashed-landed onto others. Riddled with bullet holes and with one massive vacancy in his chest, the survivors' last airdock defender bled out, his eyes already blank. As a half-dozen Dvoraks tore at his warm body, Jessica shuffled away from the horror.

  The shuttles descended, pushing away the cloud. Jessica ignored her ruined eye and focused on the box and the shuttle above it. Flanked by a wingman, the box settled over the airdock. An octet of spider-legs, glowing spears, expanded out from the shuttle’s underbelly: each of the needle-sharp tips were pointed at the dock.

  Jessica again saw the child between eye-blinks, her back turned, nearly skipping between the sluggish Dvoraks. Jessica followed the openings as fast as her legs would carry her in retreat, only thirty feet of distance from the airdock at this point. Fiona’s curses filled an otherwise murmur of moans. From Ayla and the bots, she heard nothing.

  After an over-the-shoulder glance, Jessica tore her will away from the sensation propelling her and fell to her knees. The pale glow from the shuttle's spider-legs intensified—the unearthly-dark cube dangling underneath was the only break in the fierce light. She gasped. Shouts and screams escaped the airdock, accented by random bursts of gunfire. In moments, red steam escaped the top as a fine mist spurted out of the flirtation system. The yells fell silent. The spider-legs snapped back into the shuttle. Aghast, Jessica raised infrared-Bunny to see an expanding pool of warmth seep from under their door, their one duty to defend, the duty she'd just abandoned a minute ago. That wa
s all Nome had left, whether its defenders succeeded or not.

  And they had failed.

  On the north side, the main garage door shattered. Dani and Spangler flew out, coated in fleshy chunks, helmet to tread. Dani chucked her axe airborne. The hundred-pound weapon stuck into the box, fully-imbedded in its side. The shuttle pulled up and swiveled its nose down. Its remaining wingman swiveled a ninety-degree corner.

  “D-Don’t.” Jessica clenched a fist.

  The shuttles’ cannons spit fire, knocking Spangler’s axe out of the air.

  Twin explosions of water and fire consumed the guardians. Shredded metal rained over the street side. An empty helmet ricocheted off the airdock wall before knocking a Dvorak to the ground.

  “God-fucking-damn it!” Jessica aimed from the ground and squeezed her trigger at the shuttle.

  The fireball halted, hovering before the box—she felt disappointed, but not surprised—until a distortion rippled the barrier between her and it. The gun's payload dissipated instantly against the box as something forlorn escaped the cube: a groan, a whisper. A familiar blacker-than-black smoke escaped the slice surrounding Dani’s axe, then the weapon fell to the ground. As the shuttle swiveled to her position, smoke billowed from the hole as if it'd been contained under high-pressure. Jessica aimed with her good eye and clicked. Nothing. She squeezed the trigger another half dozen times at the shuttle and the box—nothing. Through the gun's targeting, she stared down two massive turrets. “Bunny?” she said.

  Jessica felt a small tug on her arm as she stood, slow; it took all the concentration she had to focus on the blank targeting readout. Was Carmichael savoring the moment? Reconsidering this kill? They might have wanted her alive, but not at the expense of everything. For her, it was an easy choice. Die with your boots on, and all that shit. She again felt that presence against her back.

  Don’t be afraid, little dead girl. I’m about to join you.

  Bunny popped onto the screen, leaping, both eyebrows raised. The targeting emphatically circled the box's tether in contracting rings. Jessica squeezed her trigger; Bunny spun with glee. Muzzle flashes from all weapons blinded the sights.

  The booms echoed. Nothing else—she wasn’t dead? Jessica dropped the barrel to see a sparkling-white laser-trail enter the box’s barrier, and pause. It joined the zipping tracers of bouncing slugs within. The shuttle’s cannons fired again and again, each was redirected by the black smoke into a hornet's nest of ricochet. One escaped towards the wingman, slamming into its cockpit; three more followed, decimating the shuttle's nose. A fourth pierced its carrier’s hull, sending it silent and sideways. A hundred more now slammed into the cube itself, shredding it. Bunny's laser-dot finally exploded with a ground-shaking boom at the tethers. The box, released, crashed down into the airdock.

  The feeling, and whatever cursed voice had lived within it, went silent.

  Jessica felt a chill down her spine. She swung the weapon around to see Dillon and Fiona’s stalemate hadn’t advanced beyond the growth of his two-foot egg.

  Staring beyond them, Jessica’s voice caught in her throat.

  Ayla and Kahn, her wolves, her protectors, lay side by side on open ground. A small pool of blood surrounded her dog’s rear, matting into her fur. A line of mist traveled from the tiger to Dillon. In front of them them, the top half of a FireBot lay beside its treads. Severed arms at his shoulders and sparks bursting from a central spine, Nicky’s visor blinked in a slow blue strobe.

  Jessica fell to her knees, clutching her eye. So this was the end? They’d come so close to death so many times before, fought so hard to stay alive, to make a difference. Loyal, fierce, hopeful, and desperate, they survived four days to see the end, and it was in their grasp. The hordes and feds, robots and crazies, they’d beat them all, outlasted them all—to die like this.

  Don’t be dead—don’t be dead.

  She heard laughter over the fading mob. The Dvoraks had all but stopped their approach. A fifty-foot circle of sluggish or unmoving corpses surrounded Dillon and Fiona. The ones at the perimeter held a tight, shoulder-to-shoulder order. No more gunfire—the ground feds were dead. No more shuttles—they'd been downed or had fled. No more survivors. All eyes on them. Whoever commanded them now, Dillon, Fiona, or Jacob, they obeyed.

  Again, the laugh. From a hunched-over, ground-level bend, Holly flung her weight upright. All six of her arms wrapped Christy from ankle to neck. The bitch gritted her teeth, half taunting, half cursing as the bot flung her side-to-side like a dog with a rabbit. If Holly was trying to snap her neck or knock her out, she should have just pile-drived the cunt head-down into the pavement. The FireBot didn’t say a word. The tentacles loosened and constricted, not managing to dent the catsuit, let alone break it. Between adjustments, Christy wriggled lower and lower in the grasp, nearly squirming free until Holly worked her arms onto individual limbs. Grappling at its finest.

  Jessica planted the butt of her rifle and used its barrel to stand. She shot a sideways glare to Dillon—he hadn’t so much as glanced at the girls he fucked or the fallen friends that protected him the last two days—fuck you. She stumbled, but something kept her upright. Little Dead Girl? What was she? A loud crack snapped her imagination away from the pint-sized doppelganger in her mind.

  “No more laughing?” Holly’s voice boomed over the field, as if amplified tenfold.

  That got his attention, finally. The moment’s distraction set Fiona into a berserker’s assault of fire-fisted punches. His barrier seemed impenetrable; through he backpedaled with it, eyes narrowed. Why were they fighting?

  “Better let me go.” Christy spat. She bobbed, spread-eagle before the FireBot, one tentacle at each wrist, ankle, and one around the waist: she held her taut, floating. Slim breaks revealed skin beneath Christy’s shoulders and hips. The tentacles swirled, winding the disconnected sleeves down into bunches. “You only got three lives left. Kill me, they all die.”

  “If I kill you, they can die as they may.” Holly’s sixth arm arced back, that familiar viper-like pose. Jessica continued her shuffle forward. “You’re the cancer that consumed this city, its people. It wasn’t the flare, or the Dvoraks, it was their own government that betrayed them. For what! Justify it!”

  “I don’t answer to you.” A smirk.

  The tentacle punched into Christy’s mouth, shattering teeth. Her eyes rolled back in her head as the arm unwound, bulging her throat. The other snakes arced out—and yanked. With wet rips, arms and legs tore from torso. Jessica bit her lip, watching on. Shuddering violently, not a squeak escaped the girl’s mouth as the tentacle burst out her bottom and wrapped up her waist. Holly’s freed limbs pierced Christy’s shoulders. The body stretched.

  Finally unable to stomach it, Jessica shut her eyes. A gurgle. A final crack and rip.

  ~ 56 ~

  Three Lives in Nome

  December 1, 4124 — 8:25 AM

  “Ayla. A-yla.” Jessica called her like a puppy. Her monocular vision had blurred, now with tears. Her friend's tail twitched. Death-throes, life-left, or maybe she was awakening as one of them. If she died and came back, would the dog be the same but for a change of diet? If Jessica died, a predestined probability, would she be the same? The way things were going, if either fell and came back, they’d just be taken by Dillon, used like fuel, evaporated.

  She tripped in a slow-motion tumble; her forehead bounced off he pavement. From tears to seeing stars, Jessica now stared at an undressed man, his gray-blue penis inches from her face.

  Can’t die with this as my last sight.

  Jessica rolled over, slapping Bunny over with the turn. She couldn’t focus on the holo-monitor, but she imagined he was pissed. He probably would have fired by now if nor for her leg in the way. She appreciated his restraint. Jessica awaited another lift from Little Dead Girl. Not a touch. She pulled herself up to her knees, blinking some clarity into her eye.

  What is it Jacob? What’re you waiting for?

  Stand—his v
oice.

  And she wanted to. She really wanted to. Her fingers felt numb, as did her toes in her fancy-fuck temperature-regulating boots. Jessica mumbled, “Why's it so fuckin' cold?”

  No reply.

  She'd just noticed the cold. Without those gas-generator heaters or the bots' blow-drying, it wasn't simply 'cold,' or 'bone-chilling,' it was soul-destroying-frostbite-in-three-minutes cold. Negative thirty? Worse? Jessica fought off the instinct to button her jacket, drop the frosted rifle, crawl into a ball, and sleep forever in hypothermia.

  Whatever. No way. Got to get to Ayla and Kahn. Hands and knees, a glance to Dillon became a stare: he now hovered in the fucking air, a foot off the concrete, arms stretched to the wall of Dvoraks corralling the battle. If Jacob was trying to intimidate him, it wasn’t working. The corpses seemed to be ignoring Jessica and Ayla, wouldn’t come near Fiona, and had fallen by the dozens as they shambled towards Dillon—energizing him. Jacob had been nearly a genius in life, but so far this betrayal of Fiona appeared ineffectual. Kati had fallen, but his other firebrand taskmaster still stood firm in her fury.

  The schoolgirl paced around Dillon, fists fading and sweat running lines down her face. Well, she didn't look cold. Her shoulders slumped, her breathing was ragged until she spat a curse. The flames renewed in a flare. Color drained from Fiona’s cheeks. Dillon smirked and closed his arms together, pushing his black egg outside of his barrier.

  Still the same size, the construct had solidified from a wispy outline to a depthless hollow. It looked two-dimensional, so no matter which direction he pointed it, it never changed shape. A cutaway in reality. Pure void. Fiona jumped back from it. Jessica could only guess what her black-eyes saw. Forty-plus souls had been ripped from their bodies and mashed together. This wasn’t Dillon’s power alone, not like his barrier. He had taken Shrine’s cue and advice, gathered it, then bound it all together. Whether the egg-shape was its natural form or of Dillon’s design—whatever was inside couldn’t be good for anything other than a deterrent. Pure hate? Raw anguish? Maybe the essence of death itself.