Accidental Evil

by Ike Hamill

  Her father rolled Elizabeth’s bike over. It had some air in the tires. Lily was finished with the tandem. It had been a long time since her parents had ridden it. Lily hoped they still had the knack.

  “Where did John go?” her father asked.

  Lily shrugged. “Can you take off the caps?” she asked her father, to keep him occupied.

  Her mother approached and took the handlebars of the tandem.

  “I hope we still have the knack, Bruce,” she said.

  Lily almost smiled. She added a little air to the front tire and then moved to the back. With that done, she called to her friend. “Sarah, this one is for you.”

  Sarah looked over but her eyes returned quickly to the house. She walked sideways over to Lily.

  “What are they?” she whispered to Lily.

  “I don’t know,” Lily said. “They’re probably like those other bugs, but different. Let’s get out of here and let someone else worry about them, okay?”

  “What if they’re everywhere? What if they’re in the whole world?” Sarah asked.

  “Not possible,” Lily said. “Who could make that many? I think there’s probably a reasonable explanation that we’re not thinking of.”

  Sarah eventually took the bike. It was like trying to get a kid to eat Brussels sprouts.

  They heard a scream from the road. Lily looked back—her parents had their bike, and Sarah was holding Elizabeth’s. She threw her leg over her own bike and pedaled for the road. It had sounded like a young woman. If it had been Mr. Endicott screaming, she probably would have stayed back, but there was something familiar about the sound.

  “Help!” she heard. She turned and waved for the others to follow. They were just standing there while Lily rode away. She shook her head.

  As she got farther down the driveway, she saw the shape of the person through the trees. Lily rode faster—she did recognize the voice.

  “Jenny?” she called.

  “Help me!” Jenny yelled. When she cleared the trees at the corner of the drive and saw Lily, Jenny veered away. After a moment, she recognized Lily and changed course again to run towards her. Lily skidded to a stop and put her feet down.

  “It ate my dad!” Jenny yelled through her tears. “Ate him!”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Lily asked. Her imagination immediately sparked up the image that Mr. Endicott had described. She saw Jenny’s father being sucked dry by one of the little robots.

  “The bloody man ate my father,” Jenny said. Tears and snot were streaming down her face. Her hair was sticking every direction, like she had tried to tear it out. It wasn’t too far up the road to Jenny’s house, but she looked like she had run a marathon.

  “Slow down,” Lily said. She glanced back and saw that the others were finally getting their act in gear. Despite her bandage, her mom was in front on the tandem. Sarah was figuring out Elizabeth’s bike.

  “Shut up!” Jenny said. Her face scrunched up and she covered her eyes with her hands. “Just shut up. The bloody man is coming.”

  Jenny started to run towards town.

  “Jenny! Don’t go that way. There’s bad stuff in town,” Lily called.

  “I’m stopping,” her mom said. Her parents were still trying to remember how to coordinate on the tandem bicycle.

  Sarah came up abreast with Lily.

  “Where’s she going?” Sarah asked Lily.

  “I don’t know,” Lily said. “She was talking about a bloody man, and something about her father. I hope everything is okay.”

  “There are too many hills on the West Road,” her father said. “I suggest we go down as far as 270 and then hook a right.”

  “It’s the same number of hills,” her mother said.

  “They’re not as steep though,” her father said.

  Lily wondered how long this argument would go on. As it turned out, not long.

  “What’s that?” Sarah asked. Her voice was very small, and the hand that she raised to point was trembling. She pointed up the hill, in the direction that Jenny had come from. Lily walked her bike forward a few steps to get a better look. She instantly regretted it. The thing walking down the road was in the shape of a man, but it was nothing more than a loosely bound column of blood.

  “The blood man,” she whispered. She turned her bike downhill, and tried to get her feet up on the pedals. Lily turned as fast as she could, but it felt like she was moving through molasses. The world had slowed down. Somehow, she managed to open her mouth to yell at her parents. They were still bickering.

  “RUN!” she screamed. She knew it was the wrong word, but didn’t care. She pushed herself forward and the bike wobbled. Lily knew what was going to happen—the bike was going to spill her to the ground and the blood man was going to be on top of her in an instant. She remembered what Jenny had said: “It ate my Dad.”

  The bike straightened out and Lily held her breath as the wheels picked up speed. She was vaguely aware that Sarah had pushed off much more smoothly and was already rolling by her. Lily turned. For a horrified instant, she was convinced that her parents would still be arguing. They would be eaten by the blood man because they couldn’t agree on which road offered fewer hills. She was wrong. They had gotten the message and were actually working as a unit to get the big tandem bike going in the right direction.

  Lily whipped her head around the other way.

  The blood man walked.

  He didn’t pick up his pace. He simply walked. She saw a smile appear where his lips should have been, and bone white teeth.

  Chapter 42 : Prescott

  [ Working ]

  TRINA APPROACHED THE OLD man cautiously. His mouth was open, and she saw his chest rising and falling. Aside from that, he wasn’t moving. She arranged his Hawaiian shirt so it covered him better. It was ripped and bloody.

  He moaned and Trina leaned in closer.

  “Come help me,” Gerard said.

  “Don’t you think we should see if this man is okay first? What if tearing those things off just kills the person?”

  “Then they’re no worse off,” Gerard said.

  “How can you say that?” she asked. She put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Sir?” She jostled him and he moaned again.

  “Hey,” Gerard said. He moved to the window. She heard it too—there was the sound of an engine as a vehicle sped through town. As they listened, the engine stopped. Gerard moved away from the window and went back to another of the victims. He was trying to find a way to get the machine off of a woman’s chest.

  Trina gathered her nerve and leaned in closer to the man. She put her head to his chest and heard his heart beating slowly. It was way too slow to be normal. Lifting his shirt, she wondered about the puncture wounds.

  “Did something stay inside?” she asked. “It did, didn’t it?”

  “Huh?” Gerard asked. He pushed the woman he was working on. The lady stumbled backwards and caught her balance.

  “There were some metal tubes that stayed when you pulled that machine off of this guy. It was like they burrowed inside of him or something. Do you think it’s still hurting him?”

  “Anything is possible,” Gerard said. “Scientists make tiny machines, so small that you couldn’t even see them. They inject them in people to control their minds.”

  “How would you know?” Trina asked. “Even if that is true, how would you know about it?”

  “I read,” he said.

  Trina rolled her eyes.

  Gerard went back to the woman and looked ready to really put in some effort. He wedged his arm between the machine and the woman, put his hip against her pelvis, and really pulled at the Controlled Scientific Devices machine.

  “Ow!” he said. As he pulled the machine away, it began to use its pinschers to grab onto Gerard. “This one is feisty. Give me a hand, would you?”

  “Gerard, you don’t know if what you’re doing is helping or hurting. You need to stop messing around with those things until we figu
re out exactly what’s going on.”

  She stood up despite her objection. Gerard’s angle of attack had really put him in harm’s way. One of the legs of the robot had grabbed onto Gerard’s cheek and was pulling.

  “I’m in trouble,” he said. He was no longer trying to get the thing off the woman. He was merely trying to remove himself from the situation without losing too much skin. “Can you please help?”

  “Fine,” Trina said.

  She grabbed the thing around the body with both hands, like it was a huge lobster. Trina applied slow pressure. As Gerard slipped out from between the machine and the woman, Trina put her knee up in the woman’s stomach for leverage. Gerard moved around to the back of the victim and pulled her arms. Together, they kept pulling until only the flexible tubes connected machine to woman. Trina watched carefully and saw the moment that the Controlled Scientific Devices bug gave up and ejected the last of the tubes. She stepped back with the writhing machine in her firm grip and saw the tubes snake into the woman’s flesh and disappear.

  Trina locked eyes with Gerard.

  “Did you see it that time?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Gerard whispered. He held the woman up at arm’s length and then took a step back. Without his support, the woman wasn’t going to stay upright. He eased her to the ground and then flicked open the collar of her shirt to expose her chest. They both looked at the wounds left by the tubes. Trina saw something flash in one and wondered if she was seeing the last of the tube before it burrowed out of sight.

  “I wonder if they would show up on an X-ray,” Gerard said.

  “Would you mind dealing with this?” Trina asked. She still held the machine at arm’s length. It’s little legs were flailing around.

  “Yeah. Drop it before it shocks you.”

  “Shocks?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not bad.”

  It was almost like the machine got the idea from Gerard. Just after he mentioned the shocks, she felt little jolts in her fingers. More surprised than hurt, she threw the machine away from herself with a disgusted grunt.

  Gerard was ready. He grabbed the thing as soon as it hit the floor. The device seemed ready too. It flipped its legs upwards as Gerard descended. Instead of grabbing onto the metal case, his hands met the little pinching legs of the thing. Gerard yelled and tried to pull back. The machine came with him, clutching onto his flesh again.

  “Hold it!” Trina said. From the windowsill, she snatched a chunk of granite that had been carved into the shape of a bear. It fit her palm well. As Gerard held the thing aloft, Trina brought the carved rock down into what she imagined was the thing’s head. The metal dented under her blow and a couple of the legs gave up trying to get a piece of Gerard. When she brought it down again, she heard something click inside the thing.

  Gerard’s muscles stiffened and he fell back backwards.

  Trina swung the rock quickly. One of his fingers took the worst of a hit, but she mostly did damage to the machine. With one good hit, his control returned and Gerard threw the thing away from himself. After hitting the wall and falling to the floor, the thing was motionless.

  Gerard stuck his bleeding finger in his mouth.

  “You okay?”

  “I’ve had worse,” he said. “When they want to, I guess those things really can give a good shock.”

  They both turned at the sound of a click. For a second, Trina wasn’t sure what had happened. Then she saw it. She pointed and Gerard nodded. One of the devices—it was attached to a sad-looking guy with a mustache—now had a green light on its back. As they watched, the man lowered himself to his knees and then leaned back until his hands touched the floor. The mustache man made a lopsided triangle with the floor. The machine moved too. It’s little claws climbed it higher and the tubes began to extract themselves.

  Another click and another machine went green. Trina looked and saw another go green with the next click. When their machines clicked over to green, the people all contorted into the same weird yoga pose as the mustache man.

  “What’s happening?” Trina whispered.

  “They probably saw what happened to their friend and decided it wasn’t worth it,” Gerard said. He held up the carcass of one of the broken devices.

  The machine on the mustache man had completed its extraction. It began to back down the man until its claws hit the floor. With that, it turned and went in a straight line towards the stairs. The house had narrow, steep stairs, and the machine labored to climb. It reared up on hind legs and then pulled as Trina watched.

  “Where’s it going?” she asked. Gerard stepped around a couple of kneeling people to follow the thing. Trina looked down at the old man. He was still breathing, but he had stopped groaning. She had no idea if he was going to be okay or not. There was only one thing she knew for sure—she didn’t want to be alone with these people and the machines.

  Gerard stepped over another of the migrating machines and began to follow the first machine up the steps. Trina rushed to follow.

  “Don’t go up there!” she whispered.

  “What?” he asked. “Don’t you want to know what they’re doing? They seem oblivious to us.”

  “Yeah, for now. But they attack when we interfere with them.”

  “So don’t interfere,” Gerard said. He took another step. Gerard raised his hands and grabbed onto something above. While she advanced, she saw his legs rise and kick as he struggled to pull himself up. He dropped down, landing right next to another one of the machines that was struggling to climb. When he looked to Trina, he was actually smiling. “You’ve gotta see what’s up there!” he said.

  “No, Gerard, I don’t. Let’s get out of here.”

  He shrugged. Instead of coming back down, he stepped around the climbing machines and went up the stairs. Even more of the robot bugs were headed that direction. Trina couldn’t bear the thought of following him up the stairs amongst that crowd of crazy machines. She glanced at the door and considered leaving. She didn’t want to be alone. More importantly, she wasn’t sure she could afford to not know what was upstairs.

  The people around her were living proof—there were dangerous things happening in Kingston Lakes. She needed to know more.

  [ Researching ]

  Trina found her way through a connected set of rooms to the front of the house. The entire floor plan seemed to consist of additions. It was impossible to tell which part of the house was original. She found another staircase in the front room. These stairs were wider and didn’t have a column of marching robots taking up space.

  Trina climbed as quietly as she could.

  She moved down a hall towards the back of the house. To get to the rear, she had to go through a bathroom and someone’s bedroom. She opened the door slowly on the room that would have to contain the top of the stairs. It was a spare room being used as storage. Gerard was standing near a tower of boxes.

  When he pointed, she swung the door open a little more and saw what had captured his attention.

  Along one wall, a metal table looked completely out of place. Underneath it, the space was divided up into hexagonal cubbies. She watched one of the robot bugs climb a scaffold and ease itself into one of the hexagonal spaces. Extending its legs, the machine centered itself in the space. The green light on its back flashed and then turned yellow.

  Just above the table, a window had been smashed out. Diamonds of glass still clung to the frame. Trina almost screamed when a black shape filled the window and then settled itself down on the surface of the table. It was a helicopter with five propellors. The propellors spun up again and the device hovered for a second before it floated to the end of the table and settled once more. Tubes emerged from the surface of the table and made contact with the bottom of the helicopter. Another flew through the window and repeated the same docking procedure. The first one didn’t stay long. Shortly after the second arrived, the first one lifted again and flew through the window.

  Trina tugged on Gerard’s s
hirt. She didn’t want to speak in front of the machines. She pictured them all turning towards her and then giving chase.

  Gerard was still smiling. He came along when she pulled him towards the door.

  Silently, they made their way through the bedroom, the bath, and then down the hallway to the front stairs.

  “What are they doing?” Trina asked.

  “Refueling, maybe. It could be that they’re transporting out whatever they harvested from the people. Who knows. I bet there’s some engineer at Controlled Scientific Devices who could tell us.”

  Trina pushed Gerard towards the front door. She had thought that she wanted to know what was happening. Now that she had seen it, she wished she hadn’t. The machines were so industrious and autonomous. Whatever they were doing, it was terrifying.

  Gerard paused at the door.

  “What about the people in back?” he asked.

  “The machines detached. What are we going to do for them?”

  He shrugged.

  “Come on,” she said. She let herself out into the sunshine and Gerard followed. She put up an arm and held him back. Out on the main road, a trio of people were walking south. They were too far to tell for sure, but she thought the tall one might be Vernon Dunn.

  “That’s the crazy lady,” Gerard said. He moved around her arm and started forward.

  “Gerard!” she whispered. “Wait!”

  “And that guy and the floating kid,” Gerard said over his shoulder. He started to trot after the three. Trina ran to catch him, but it was too late. April Yettin had already turned to see him approach and Vernon Dunn was turning around as well.

  Trina had intended to be more cautious, but Gerard had once again thrown that out the window.

  Chapter 43 : Endicott

  [ Spying ]