by M. K. Gibson
So there we were. A bunch of forsaken monkeys left to the mercy of Hell and the original Darkness of the Deep.
A barely audible skittering sound brought me out of my trip down memory lane. I turned toward the noise. Looking down the deserted streets, I didn’t see anything, but I heard the skittering, now coupled with clacking and the distinct scent of ozone. I looked down the building face itself and I saw the source of the noise.
A horde of clockwork mechanical ants coming up at me. OK, that’s fucked up.
They looked like they were from the basement of a steampunk enthusiast. Brass and cogs with sparking electricity, the size of large dogs, coming at me very quickly. I moved to the center of the tenement’s roof and listened. The sounds were coming from all sides.
Shit.
The ants clacked and wheezed. They crested the roof in a flood, several hundred of them swarming. I could see they had serrated pincers, jagged and rusty. And being the only thing out here tonight, my guess was they were coming for me. Since it had been almost 200 years since my last tetanus shot, staying here didn’t seem to be a wise course of action.
Besides, bugs are gross, be they carapace and guts or metal and voltage.
I drew my pistols and fired off a few rounds in multiple directions. Ants were destroyed quickly from the plasma blasts, but more swarmed over the wreckage. I ran over to an old air conditioning vent and ripped it from its moorings. Metal squealed. I hurled it at the closest of the mechanical bugs, hoping to clear a lane.
The animatronic insects caught the unit in their pincers and began shearing through the sheet metal like paper. Damn. One of the ants closed and leapt for me. I caught it mid-air. The thing was heavy and the pincers snapped, trying to crush my head. Prehensile fiber-optic cables acted like antennae. Man, that was just gross. The thing wriggled and snapped down on my arm. I had to let go of my other arm to activate my density coat. The old brown motorcycle jacket hardened and the ant couldn’t pierce it. But I couldn’t move my arms now.
I threw myself and the ant to the ground, dislodging the pincers. I de-activated my coat and grabbed the creature’s mandibles. The serrated edges cut into my hands and I let out a roar. I ripped the pincers free of its head, grabbed the antennae, and began swinging the ant around like a hundred-pound flail. I cleared more and more ants out of the way and then flung the contraption off the side of the building. Once I had a little breathing space, I reached for the back of my belt, and I pulled a few concussion grenades that I had modified. They emitted more air blast than damage. Intent on clearing, I tossed them into the ants on all sides. The blasts went off, sending them flying haphazardly.
I needed a quick escape, and I needed it now. If I jumped over them, I would have a fifteen-story drop to the concrete below. I am hardy, but not indestructible. I am fortunate that my parents, aside from being academics, were huge nerds and left me their comic collection. When I made my tech bracers and gear, I tried to pull off some self-serving geekery of my own based off the spandex ass-kickers from their respective magical pages.
I leapt from the center of the roof and ignited the pulse boosters in my boots for the extra clearance. I soared high over the swarm into the empty night air, took aim at the next super high-rise with my right tech bracer, and fired a nano-filament grapple line. The anchor sunk into the building’s concrete wall and the servo winch engaged, pulling me in. Gravity took over and I swung in. Before I became a splat on the wall, I pulled a pistol and fired a few shots at the upcoming glass window, shattering it. I released the grapple anchor, swung through the open window, fell into a pretty bad-ass combat roll, and popped up to my feet, taking in my new surroundings.
I was in an abandoned office building. Several homeless people were inside and came awake as I crashed through their wall. They looked horrible and emaciated. The room reeked of garbage and human waste. This type of occurrence was more and more common as the years went by. Demon law had no sense of welfare. And sympathy would only result in your own end coming quicker.
“Sorry for the disturbance, folks,” I said. It really was the only thing that came to me.
I looked back out the crashed window and saw something horrible, straight out of National Geographic. The mecha-ants were building a bridge of themselves, spanning the distance like in that crappy Indiana Jones flick. They were locking themselves in place one by one and making their way to me. At the rate they were going, they would be here in only a few minutes. Shit shit shit. I looked back at the homeless people huddled in fear.
“Any of you have a rocket launcher?” I asked hopefully. “No? All right, there is clanky death coming fast. Get out of here! Now!” I yelled at them. They just stared at me. I looked back out the window. They were almost here. I didn’t have time for this. I drew both pistols and fired at the feet of the homeless.
“RUN, MORONS!”
The message was received this time as they all scrambled out various exits of the old office. Damn, there were kids with them. I dumped the old fuel cells from my pistols, popped in some fresh ones and fired a few shots out the window at the ant bridge. Yet they kept swarming. If I climbed to the roof, I would be in the situation I was before. If I took the stairs, I would just get overrun.
That was it. I was boned. Dead by mecha-ants. I always hoped it would be in bed with twins.
Why don’t you calm down, set aside your perversions, and see what is around you that you could use? said the female voice in my head.
“Mom, not now! I’m about to be savaged by some nerd’s clockwork comic convention creation!”
Nice alliteration, son, but do not speak to your mother that way, said a different voice.
“Dad, now is not the time! I am running out of options!” I said, frustrated.
“Then heed your mother. Take a breath, calm down, and act your age. What is available to you?”
They may have been dead close to 160 years, but they had a point. Freaking out wouldn’t save me. I scanned the room. For both what was and was not there. No fresh fire bins. No drums to burn for heat and to cook food. But I did see several small space heaters and old hotplates. That meant this place still had electricity. An old generator, perhaps? Still active and kept running by the building’s inhabitants?
OK, OK, I got an idea.
A bad one.
This was going to hurt.
I fired one of the nano filaments into a nearby outlet and felt the surge of electricity run up my arm. My skin felt on fire and my muscles were twitching fiercely. I aimed my other bracer at the growing ant bridge through the window and fired a second nano line.
I took a deep breath and steadied myself. This was going to really, really hurt.
I released the bracers’ charge down my other arm into the ant bridge, completing the circuit. I screamed as untold volts screamed through me. All my muscles locked at the strain. I could taste metal. I saw blinding white light.
The bridge of ants writhed with the surge of power. A few seconds of agony and it was over. The ant bridge overloaded and collapsed. The automatons fell like discarded children’s toys to the streets below, and I fell to my knees to puke.
Well done, son, said my father’s voice.
“Just switch off for a bit, Dad. I think I pissed myself a little.”
I lay there for a bit and lit a smoke. I had just electrocuted myself in order to stop a swarm of mechanical bugs from ripping me apart. Not the way I spend most evenings. When I finished my smoke, I lit another. I felt I deserved it.
I then contemplated my next move. So Father Grimm must have set this up. He wanted to see what I was capable of in a no-win situation. His own Kobayashi Maru. This location was picked because of its remoteness and apathy toward collateral damage. Also, no bishop would give a damn about what happened here.
Clever.
But whoever created those things must be an ally of Grimm’s. Nothing about his spooky nature said “I like to tinker with deadly erector sets.” That also meant no demon was allied
in this. The tech knowledge it would take to make such things is beyond their scope. Their inability to grasp human “technomancy” has kept us alive and useful to them.
So Grimm had allies. And one who was willing to waste valuable toys on a recruitment exercise. Who could that be?
Hell, that just brought up more questions than answers. I needed a drink.
With a grunt of effort, I painfully picked myself up from the ground and made my way to the window. I used the nano lines to rappel down the building, since the homeless bums were no doubt clogging the stairwells. And I did not feel like talking to them. Or smelling like them. Once I hit street level I made my way to my bike and powered it up.
In the distance I saw something coming my way. Something huge. It looked like a cross between a ten-foot-tall clockwork Sasquatch and the loader mech from Aliens. It whirred, popped, and clanked down the street. Two large coils from its back arced bright blue electricity. It seemed to be made from the same materials the ants were. Well, I’ll be damned if I was hanging around. You didn’t get to be my age by fucking with a mechsquatch. So I opened the throttle wide and sped my way through the early morning to my home. My lair.
Chapter Five
A Century of Re-runs Sucks Balls
Oh yeah, I have a lair. Be jealous.
My bike flew through the last remnants of night into predawn. Ugh. These rough nights were hell. My home was out of the way of the normal Hell-sanctioned living districts. A little pocket of undeveloped land in New Golgotha forty miles or so west of Razor Bay. In fact, my place was quite illegal, but I paid the proper tithes and bribes for the authorities to look the other way. None of them knew where I lived for sure, just the general area known as Fallout Waste.
The area near my home looked like a wasteland. Overturned buildings, fallen towers, debris. A few shanties littered about. And that is how I wanted it to look. I built the shanties. I blew up the buildings. I put up the radioactive and biohazard signs. And I installed all the security systems and monitors. The real secret of my home is below ground.
After the war started, people scavenged what they could here and there and fought back. Military bases became quite popular. After troop mobilizations, demonic attacks, and hellhound feasts, these bases were deserted and eventually forgotten. Well, I knew of an old base my dad sometimes worked at near where I grew up. He used to sneak me in sometimes and I remembered the old underground entrance codes. I found one of the underground bunkers and a tunnel system. I figured if the old government was nice enough to build a facility underground the size of a mall, someone should use it. Generators were already in place, running off geothermal power, along with multiple technological infrastructures and a motor pool. It was a perfect place. So for the last 200 years I’ve been storing supplies and enhancing my lair.
I checked my bike’s link to my master security system and ensured the area was free of trespassers. Then I rode into an old plane hangar and used the freight elevator to take me down into my home.
The master lights came on at my presence, and my lair lit up. Past the entrance tunnel was what I used as my general living quarters. Movie posters and rows upon rows of bookshelves decorated my home. Items scavenged from old shopping centers—just about anything that could be of worth—littered my place with little to no rhyme or reason. Special items, supplies, and the rare stuff were kept in the stasis chambers to prevent aging. Another design of my dad’s that I built.
I made my way to the control room that used to govern this place, which I now use to manage my security. I double-checked my monitors and external security. On the ride home I began to think about how easy it was to get away from the mechanized ants, and their giant companion. Well, relatively easy.
The Machiavellian question that kept running through my mind was: If I wanted to track someone back to their home base, what would I do?
Simple. I would inflict just enough trauma so they would retreat to someplace safe and lick their wounds.
That was what had my hackles up. Something was tickling the back of my brain. Could someone have tracked me back to my lair? The metal man and his ant army would be easy enough to detect, but this Grimm, he had ways around technology. Magic, apparently.
The screens were empty, the sensors quiet. No moving targets registered, and no life forms scanned. Still, I had a hunch, and I waited at the monitors for an additional ten minutes. Then twenty. Then thirty. After an hour I realized I was getting paranoid in my old age.
I headed back to my main living area and went over to my large square wood and steel workbench I’d liberated from an old middle school’s shop class. I slipped off my tech bracers, connected them to my own intranet, and ran a full diagnostic. They were working fine. But I always check. Ask any soldier, or someone who’s seen combat, and they will tell you weapon maintenance is vital. You never want a jam or misfire when you need it most. Speaking of, I took out my plasma pistols and ran them through a thorough cleaning and system checkup as well.
I hung my motorcycle coat I’d turned into my density jacket on an ancient coat rack I’d gotten from the wreckage of a chain restaurant, the type of place with all the knick-knack shit on the wall. Looking around my compound, I realized I lived in one of those places with all my stuff strewn about. I moved over to my lounging area, vaulted over the back of the couch, and plopped into my spot. Propping my feet on the coffee table, I accidentally knocked over a stack of paperbacks. Mostly old fantasy books. One series, a personal favorite, was about a “modern”-day wizard and his detective agency. I would have loved to have met that author. Besides being a great read, his stories gave me ideas for my tech and gadgets. But then again, so did my old Batman comics.
Along my entertainment wall was the biggest high-definition plasma screen TV you ever saw. Sure, they make ultra-def Digital Hologram Projection devices now, and I have several in storage, but I like the look of the plasma. Reminds me of life before all this. And no, it was not easy to get in there. Every video playback device and game system I managed to obtain is proudly displayed. And, I’m proud to boast, I’m pretty sure I have the biggest video library in New Golgotha. I have a strict no-lending policy. The claymore mines attached to the shelving should be a deterrent any sane person could understand. In this era, entertainment is capital. There hasn’t been any new music or movies or television in the last one hundred plus years or so. So dealing in various media and old-world relics, like my cigarettes, is quite lucrative. That being said, a century of re-runs sucks balls.
After the craziness with the mecha ants, I wanted nothing more than to flick on the TV and relax. I waved my hand and the entertainment hub projected the holo display that served as a remote. I flicked through the channels aimlessly.
“Three more comatose bodies discovered by Razor Bay’s docks,” the news anchor reported.
The demoness co-host laughed out loud. “Being poor and human is never good.”
Next channel.
“Unable to lose weight? Tired of trying and failing? Do you have two weeks to spare? Come on down to Rejuvenation, Medical Coma Induction. You will live off your own body fat for two weeks while our expert staff caters to your needs using state of the art electro-muscular stimulation. Wake up a trimmer, fitter you!” Ugh…lazy fucks. Next channel.
“Pay your tithes, or we’ll kill you. A friendly reminder from your local demon lord.” Next channel.
I surfed through the local stations and I just couldn’t find anything to veg out to. The culmination of the night’s activities wasn’t sitting right with me. I waved the media hub away, turning off the TV.
I looked for my ArcTech HoloGen X7 computer. I swear they make these things smaller so you lose them and have to buy a new one, I thought, grabbing the little black box from the floor and placing it on the coffee table in front of me. I flipped it on and it ran a quick scan of me and the room’s dimensions. It sparked to life as it booted up and displayed my utility apps in perfect UD-3D. Icons floated in brilliant blues a
nd reds about the room, all within an arm’s reach.
I reached out and tapped my messages icon. The sub file showed three messages. The first was from an ex. Gwen. No doubt it would be full of nudity, sex promises, drunken rants, and swearing. There is a reason you take the crazy ones to bed and never home. I grabbed the holo icon message and crumpled it up and threw it over my shoulder as the file deleted unplayed. The next message was from Jensen. I grabbed the message and dropped it into the player.
The midair floating icons scurried aside for the message video player to pop up. I grabbed the edges and pulled them apart, expanding the screen. Jensen’s face filled the video player.
“Hey bud, I guess you’re not back yet. Drop me a line when you get in. I caught a good look of that Father Grimm guy when he walked out and I asked a few questions on your behalf. You might be interested in the answers. Let me know when you want to meet up. Oh, and I am running low.” He waved a near-empty pack of smokes. The sight of the smokes made me want one. I grabbed a half-empty pack from my coffee table and lit up.
The last message was from an unknown UID. I dropped the file into the player and the vid-message was short and sweet. It was Father Grimm. All he said was, “Look behind you.”
I listened and heard a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. I sighed loudly and snubbed out my smoke. Next to my couch was an old mini-fridge I kept beer in. I grabbed a bottle and tossed it over my shoulder without looking back. I didn’t hear the bottle smash. When I heard the sound of an opening cap, I looked over my shoulder and Grimm was standing there drinking the beer I had tossed him. He smiled at me and raised his beer in a toast.
“It was the package, wasn’t it? I knew it didn’t have any tracking tech in it. And in the fight I forgot all about it. Let me guess, a talisman of some kind for you to home in on?” I asked.