“We flushed out a squad of six fugitive scouts. Five dead. One is left.”
“Did you ask him where his comrades are hiding?”
“He’s not talking, sir.”
“Hold it there,” I say. “I’m on my way.”
The spread-out vanguard of spider tanks slow their crawling. A bellowing call of horns rumbles and rolls over the foothills. These simple audible signals trump the sporadic radio jamming.
Hold, they say. Hold for more direction.
I clench my legs and the black steed beneath me surges forward.
“I would like to know where the other fugitives are,” I say with a friendly smile. “Maybe you could tell me?”
My steed has snagged the captured scout by the back of his flak jacket. The man is struggling and grunting a little, legs dangling. The machine is reared up on its hind legs, holding the soldier up with one forelimb, the blunt side of its leg jammed under his collar, hydraulics coughing.
The boy just isn’t talking, though.
So things start to move faster.
The remains of this man’s squad lie on the ground in heaps. Bullet-gouged boulders loom over this clearing, bloodstained bandages fluttering. The shrapnel is what got them, up here among the scabby brown rocks. Our dragonfly loitering munitions can maneuver behind obstacles, stream down, and explode. This soldier has got flecks of shrapnel in his cheeks. Like most folks these days, he doesn’t seem especially afraid to die. He just hangs there limp, done kicking. Gives me a hollow-eyed stare that says he’s seen worse.
Well, this soldier’s about to find out different.
Archos R-14 came up with a lot of surprises in his time. And when he left the landscape for good, why, all those pretty baubles were left lying around for enterprising minds to play with.
“All right, then,” I say.
I walk around behind my steed. Reach under its belly and pry back a metal lever. Something heavy drops into the dirt. I hook the toe of my boot onto it and drag it over so the scout can see it.
“While I’m here asking questions, I’d also like to know who is blocking my satellites. Because I would like to have a stern talk with that person.”
I flash him a grin, but the soldier isn’t looking at me now. Not paying me any attention at all, actually. His blue eyes are fixed on the ground, trying to figure out the purpose of this dusty black tangle of wires.
A whimpering sound comes from down low in his throat.
That’s interesting. This white boy has been in the war long enough to know what a parasite is. I wonder if he marched with us to Ragnorak. Marched with them, I mean.
“Did you fight with Gray Horse?” I ask, watching his eyes.
The soldier nods, lips quivering. His face is going a little red from having his shirt pulled up so tight under his neck. His wet mouth is opening and closing and he’s saying the word please under his breath.
His begging for mercy reminds me of something, but I can’t think of what.
I give the parasite a kick. It flops over and activates, flexing its clawed feet in the air like a toppled roly-poly. A series of gently flexing legs unfold from its abdomen. The thorax area sports a pair of what I can only describe as mandibles. The thing hums, powering up on a Rob battery.
The soldier’s eyes flick up to my shoulder. He’s looking down the hillside past me. Down where I left the rest of my own scouting party. After the incident in the field with the broken dolls, I sort of decided that some jobs I’ve got to do myself. There aren’t many others strong enough to stomach what I can handle. Why, I’ll bet my boys will barely be able to stand what’s to come even out there from screaming distance.
I tap the soldier on his shoulder, peer into his face. He twists in the air slightly. Won’t look at me.
“Give me their coordinates, son,” I say. “Battle plans, too.”
“No,” he pleads.
My face is a slab of meat over bone. My voice dead as the space between galaxies. At my feet, the modified parasite looks to me like a metal scorpion. An economical tangle of wires. Tiny insectile head. Pincers clicking, it rears up on its hindquarters and sinuously climbs my leg. Those clawed toes rip my pants in a few places, pierce my flesh. Finally, it curls itself over my arm. I drag my fingers over its carapace, petting the thing. I guess it just feels like the natural thing to do.
The man groans.
“You know what this does?” I ask, and I lean in close so he can watch my burst lips. “It makes meat talk.”
Hanging there, the soldier blinks at me. Eyes round in wonder and fear. “What are you?” he asks in a low voice. “What did it do to you—”
A stubby blade juts from the thing’s metal-sheathed belly. There’s a narrow gouge running down one side of it. A blood gutter, like on a sword.
Those blue eyes squeeze shut. Lips fluttering breathless words. The quiet sounds of his prayer set my lips and cheeks to twitching in a bothersome way. It’s nothing but residual neural pathways firing with echoes of the beliefs this body once had. The space where Hank’s faith used to be is like termite holes in rotten wood.
“Are you working with those sighted children?” I ask. “Are your friends holed up in the city? Is that why I can’t see?”
“. . . our Father who art in Heaven . . .”
Without any more pause or reflection, I lift up my pet. Reach around the soldier and jam that metal scorpion into the base of his neck. He squeals and struggles as insectile legs wrap around his head from behind. Questing black fingertips push past his lips and go right into his mouth. Wires pinch his skin and pull his jaw wide. A couple latch onto his throat, settling there like a flautist’s fingers. Finally, a long, flexible tail curls snugly around the man’s upper chest. The tail contracts and squeezes the man like an accordion. A test squeeze, pushing air out of his lungs.
“Ungh,” says the soldier. He can’t squeal anymore.
“You want to know what I am?” I ask. “I’m you. I’m the best of you. I’m every combination of you. You made me. For the rest of your short life, I want you to remember that you made me. I did not choose to be made. You chose. You!”
Whoa. I need to calm down. These emotions will get you going.
He tries to scream as the stinger penetrates the back of his neck, severing his spinal column between the C2 and C3 vertebrae. The man’s body goes limp, tears streaming over dirty cheeks and around that wide-open mouth full of black wires. His legs shiver a little from some crossed wire. He soils himself, a pungent stream of piss dripping off his boots and into the dirt.
Farther down the hillside, my men are looking anywhere but up here.
It gets real quiet. Just the soft wet noises of the scorpion adjusting itself, settling on in. Those mandibles peek around the soldier’s face, probing. They get a firm hold of his jaw. His eyes roll back in his head. The tail circles his chest, fills his lungs with air, massaging, coiling, uncoiling.
The measured sound of his breathing comforts me.
“We’re going to find your friends,” I say. “End their suffering quick. We’ll get hold of that supercluster and get to thinking about what to do next. I’m going to find my next iteration and slip this mortal coil. Ha-ha. Know what that means?”
I give him a broken-toothed grin.
“I’m already a god, son. But with that much processing, I’ll make a new version of myself. And another and another. I’ll become a god of gods.”
I yank the soldier’s radio from his belt. Hold it up to his stretched-out lips.
“Time to do your part, soldier,” I say.
The calliope begins. Spidery legs knead the stubbled throat. Ancillary fingers manipulate the tongue and cheeks. Big pincerlike mandibles crank the jaw up and down. And the tail squeezes air out of the lungs, through the vocal cords, and out of the mouth.
I whisper to the scorpion and it translates.
“Sentry leader,” says the man, his strained voice evening out. “This is sentry flock calling base. On return path. Had a hardware ma
lfunction. Requesting full coordinate refresh. Come back.”
The man sounds almost normal.
There is a long pause as they run their voice-stress analysis and speaker-identification routines. The radio crackles, spits out, “Roger, sentry flock. We receive you. Coordinates refreshed. Encryption band alpha delta gamma five three oh.”
Troop locations, formations, and tactics zip neatly into my data banks. Everything I need to locate and crush the fugitives. It’s amazing how simple the humans are to manipulate. Job done, I rip the scorpion-thing out of the soldier. He flops down into the wet dirt, his whole body convulsing.
Then my walker steps on his head. Just like that. Lights out.
I send the call to battle over a coded ultralow-frequency burst. My walker transmits the message straight through the ground, slamming its forelimbs into the hardpack. The thudding sonic vibration sweeps away like the breath of ozone chasing a rain front. It’s a deep sound—the bellowing of some prehistoric titan big as a mountain range, speaking in the old language of the rocks and trees.
“Coordinates acquired, target identified.”
Response calls sweep in from behind me, the ultralow frequency making my guts churn. Each walker striding over the landscape behind me is groaning deep and loud. The ground shakes with their conversation.
My assault column is moving.
I beckon my scout group over and they walk up the hill toward me, their forms wavering in the heat radiating off the pavement. In puddles of light, the men look like children. Mouths set into grim lines at the horror of the corpse at my feet.
Even the sight hurts them. I can see the splinters of tainted light pushing through their retinas and lodging in their memories. Such fragile creatures. These are the hardest survivors left among men and they’re floating around me as fragile as soap bubbles. How ironic that they are designed to survive. Exquisitely evolved to extend the pain for as long as possible. They’re capable of just about anything, except allowing themselves to taste ultimate solace.
The fugitives from Gray Horse and their allies are not far from here. As predicted, they are lurking near Freeborn City. But my Cotton Army is on the march up from the South. The Tribe is also getting closer by the minute from the East. This afternoon, we’re going to annihilate the last of the human resistance and then I’ll settle on into the supercluster while the freeborn scatter.
“Send the wolves out ahead,” I transmit.
A cadre of sprinting quadrupeds races out past our line, their sharp, curved spines glinting under the sun as they claw up the dirt. These units used to wander the woodlands for Archos R-14, mapping and hunting. On my march home, I found them by the dozens. Now the wolflike machines are my first line of attack. When they slash into the refugee column, it will slow them down for sure. Heck, it just might end the fight quick.
They sure won’t know what hit ’em, comes a stray thought.
Good one, Hank. That’s a good one. Hush now, Bubba.
8. KIN
Post New War: 10 Months, 26 Days
It was plain bad luck that the refugees from Gray Horse came to be led by the former sergeant of the legendary Bright Boy squad. Even under his command, I could sense their fear and despair. To my surprise, however, their lack of hope did not impact their battle readiness. What I didn’t realize was that these people had been running for a very long time. After all these years, they no longer needed hope to survive.
—ARAYT SHAH
NEURONAL ID: CORMAC WALLACE
Houdini is wheezing, legs shaking as he plows at top speed up the middle of a dirt-encrusted highway. We are climbing twisted foothills made of pancaked sediment that jut out in steep angles to either side, the bare rock crowned by fat green bushes. Behind us, the road stretches south to become a strand of gray hair meandering to the plains.
“Come in, Mathilda,” I say into my collar radio. “Do you have an ETA for rendezvous?”
Cherrah has her right arm around me, her palm on the back of my head and a handful of my hair in her fist. I’m cradling her. She crouches on a pile of army blankets up here on the turret deck, wearing only the top half of a pair of gray thermal underwear. Her fatigues hang flapping over the railing, body armor a pile of turtle shells in the corner. Her knees are up, legs apart. Her other hand is over her stomach.
She’s trying not to scream.
We bounce painfully as Houdini grinds up the winding road. I’m trying to absorb the impacts, but it’s not helping much. Cherrah grits her teeth, saving her screams for the contractions. I figure we’ve got about half an hour until the baby comes.
Above us, stained clouds are tumbling in titanic slow motion over a winking sun. On the blurry southern horizon, a smear of rain sways back and forth across the plains. And a little farther back, I catch sight again of those glinting scabs of metal. Hank Cotton’s wolves.
We searched for two weeks, but we couldn’t reach the other refugees in time. He found us too soon.
“Mathilda?” I say. “Do you copy?”
I found the girl on the wire after Cherrah and I made it out of Gray Horse. When she connected with us, Houdini’s diagnostic screen lit up like an arcade game. She told us where the other refugees are headed—a place near Fort Collins, Colorado.
A place called Freeborn City.
But now something is throwing radio interference. Mathilda hasn’t copied in over an hour. And every time we round a bend, the enemy is closer. Houdini’s entire frame is groaning as he pushes his joint strength to the limit. The machine has been running nonstop for too long and we’re still too far away from the others. We have to stop and fight.
Not this bend, but the next one.
Cherrah looks imploringly at me, her hair plastered to her forehead in dark bands. I shake my head no. The mountain breeze sweeps across us, cool and rain-smelling and pleasant considering that in fifteen minutes we’ll be fighting for our lives.
“He’s coming,” she says. “Now.”
Cherrah’s fingers collapse into a fist and she pulls my hair as another contraction quakes through her abdomen. She shouts again, slamming her left fist into the metal decking.
“Dammit,” she says, crying now. “Let’s do this. We’ve got to do this.”
“A little more distance,” I whisper.
I cradle her head as lightning lances the horizon. Cherrah’s face is determined, eyes closed, sweat budding on her forehead. She lets go of my hair, smooths it back down in rough pats. “Sorry,” she says, between jolting footsteps. “But seriously, let’s do this.”
“Okay,” I say. “Here we go.”
We’re halfway between the next bend and the last one, on a slope with a good field of view. It’s as good a place as any.
“Houdini, half step to halt,” I call, putting my hand on the warm turret and tapping it twice.
The lumbering machine slows down in jerking steps. A warm battery smell rises up and the first sprinkles of rain hiss on his steaming leg joints. After a few steps, the whole quaking walker is finally still.
We gambled and we lost.
“Bunker up, Houdini. Southward attack posture,” I say. “Buy as much time for us as you can, buddy. We’re having a baby.”
The four-legged sprinters close on our position quickly. Two minutes after I manage to get Cherrah down from Houdini’s turret deck, I hear the doglike runners as they come bounding around the next-to-last bend.
Cherrah is under Houdini’s shadowed belly, separated from the hard road by a haphazard pile of army blankets. She is on all fours now and she won’t let me near. When she isn’t gritting her teeth or screaming, she is quietly crying in a way that scares me. I reach over and try to rub her back, keeping one eye on the road, but she shoves me away.
“Watch our twelve,” she says.
“Roger that,” I say.
At the forward leg armor, I drop Cherrah’s machine gun into a mount. Plenty of stolen ammunition is still rattling around in Houdini’s belly net. I wrap my fingers a
round the cool metal grip of the gun and stare down the sight, through sheets of whispering rain. The weather has caught up with us, rainwater already collecting in shining puddles on the abandoned highway.
Come in, Mathilda. Do you read me? Come in.
I hear my own voice whispering quietly from my collar radio. On a loop, my emergency message is going out on Mathilda’s last-known frequency.
Nothing is moving in the distance. A steep cliff face rises up on our right and a railing separates us from a drop-off on the left, so a flanking maneuver would require some time. With such low visibility I don’t really expect it. They’ll probably come down the middle, careful and slow, using wrecked cars as cover. But I occasionally lean my head out and glance at the guardrails anyway.
Now it’s just rain and quiet crying.
Houdini’s intention light clicks over to yellow. Cherrah and I share a quick worried glance. The big walker has radar pods that can cut through the rain to ping metallic targets. Yellow means the enemy is sighted.
I yank back the slide on the machine gun and put my finger in the trigger guard. Sight it on the bend down the road from here. There is a clear area before the abandoned cars start. Not a lot of space, but it may be my only chance to hit a target.
A slinking blur of silver appears.
I squeeze the trigger. Bullets flicker out of the muzzle and hot silver chain links waterfall to the road on my right. The runner goes down in a puff of smoke.
Then another darts through. And another. Sprinting, closing the distance between us. They keep good following distance from each other, spreading themselves out to trick me into draining my ammo. Too far apart. I can tag only one of the three. Cherrah screams through another contraction and her voice is cut off by the groan and woof of Houdini firing a shell from his turret. A second of silence, then a shock wave and a tornado of asphalt and dirt leap into the sky. Back to the trigger.
Chowchowchowchow—release, let the barrel cool. Chowchowchowchow.
My focus narrows to the nose of my gun. Rain spits off the hot barrel. The world collapses to the invisible extension of force extending from the tip of my weapon to that bend in the road. Reaching out and dinging the vicious running quadrupeds that are tumbling, diving, and lunging between abandoned cars to close on our position.
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