He yanked out the stinger on two. I should have seen that coming. He did the same when I stepped on a spike when I was nine and he had to yank the board off of my foot to get the long nail out.
I shrieked.
“Take a deep breath, son.”
I winced and gave that a try but all I could manage were shallow gulps of air.
The woman, still panting, stood and stumbled into the store.
“Where are you going?” my father asked. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded curious.
“Not out there,” she said. She searched the shelves. She didn’t find what she was looking for right away.
“What’s your name?” I called.
“Emma.” After a few moments she extended the legs of the exo-stilts to get a better view of the place. She turned in a slow circle, spotted what she was looking for and made for the back of the little store. She retrieved a first aid kit hanging on the wall by the customer’s chemical toilet and returned to my side in a few long strides. The exo-stilts hissed as Emma returned to close to normal height.
“Those stilts make you quite the runner, don’t they?” my father asked.
“If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. Barely made it as it was. You two got names?”
“I’m Steve Bolelli. This is my son, Dante.”
“What is your function in the beautiful town of Marfa?” she asked.
“I’m in the demolition business,” my father said. “Once I’m done, Dante lays cable and buries batteries under the ground I blow up.”
She said nothing as she searched the kit. She came up with two small canisters that were stuck together. Each canister fed one nozzle.
I held out my injured hand and held my breath. She aimed the nozzle carefully and sprayed the medicine, first through the palm and then through the back of my hand.
I squeezed my eyes tight against the sting.
“Does it hurt?”
“Nah,” I said. But my teeth were gritted.
“Of course, it hurts,” my father said. “The anti-biotic stings as it cleans. That’s how you know it’s still working.”
“Ouch!” I felt pressure, expanding at the edge of the wound.
“That’s the filling agent,” Dad said. “It’ll pass in a moment once the foam has filled the hole. Just like expanding insulation foam fills the spaces in a wall.”
I winced harder. “You sure?”
My father looked down at his own body. Without his cy-suit, there would be much less of him. “Not my first rodeo.”
“What’s a rodeo?” Emma asked.
“Never mind.”
The pain eased. I gave the woman a grateful nod. “Where did you come from, Emma?”
“Artesia.”
“Domers up that way,” my father said.
Emma nodded as she went through the rest of the items in the first aid kit, apparently evaluating their usefulness. “Yes. We were Domers, anyway. The last biodome complex in New Mexico isn’t there anymore. ”
Her sensory vest was all pockets and she dropped what she wanted to keep in a new pocket each time. Neither I nor my father thought to stop her from scavenging. I noted that after she put an item in a pocket, she patted it and said the name of the item aloud to memorize where each thing was stored: “cardio-stim…epi-pen…diarrhea med…burn gel…airway pack…scissors…”
“What happened in Artesia?” Dad asked.
“It started with a shatter storm. Dome 3 went down first. That’s where I was. Tomatoes.”
I’d never been in a shatter storm. I asked what it was like.
“It’s just like a regular storm,” Emma said, “but times twenty. It’s like whoever is in charge decided to park thunder and lightning right over your roof. At first you think it’s so intense it’s got to stop soon. Earthquakes can be intense but they don’t last long. You figure the same for the storm. Instead it gets worse. You feel the thunder rumble through your whole body and the lightning keeps flashing in bolts. Chains and bolts of lightning tore up #3 within the first few minutes. It went on for hours, though. We had twelve domes in Artesia and eight of them went down in one night. We lost every apple and fig orchard.”
My father put his back to the rear wall and slid until he was sitting on the floor. The tiny green lights in the cy-suit at his shoulder and hip flashed orange and then went dim. He was preserving battery life. I wondered how long we’d be trapped in the store.
As the howl of the civil defense sirens rose and fell in the distance, Emma told us what happened in Artesia. The noise almost swallowed the screams of the dying. But not quite.
6
“As each dome fell to the storm, we called in the bots to make repairs,” Emma said.
“They didn’t?” I immediately hated myself for speaking without thinking. She was here so of course the bots didn’t do their jobs.
“At first the dome drones said their self-preservation protocols kept them from climbing up and fixing things. Too much lightning. Then they said there was something wrong with the silica mixtures. I didn’t believe it so I went outside to check the tank reserves myself.”
My father barely seemed to be listening. He interrupted her to ask, “You got a lot of rain up in Artesia, did you?” Apparently, he was thinking about the storms and all the water Marfa didn’t receive.
“Not as much as I would have expected. There was a torrential downpour at first. Then it was all thunder and lightning. I’ve never seen anything like it. We sluiced a bunch of the captured water into the undamaged domes but they weren’t undamaged for long.”
I cleared my throat and gave Dad a hard look. “You were saying something about checking tanks?”
“Yeah. The short description is we take sand and turn it into tempered dome glass. There are three layers of it: safety, lens and solar. The storms tore through all three quickly. The window of opportunity to maintain containment shrunk pretty fast. When the bots refused to do the repairs, I joined a team of volunteers to go up on the inside of my dome to spray another layer.”
“What was wrong with your spray tanks?” Dad asked.
“Sludge. The glass reserves are supposed to be constantly heated and turned so the gel is ready to go in case of emergency.”
“The storm kill the heater?” I asked.
“The bots did that. Only one tank still had hot gel but the hoses were cut outside the dome. The other tanks were solid as granite.”
My father sighed. “Knew it. Damn bots.”
“Then I wish you’d been there to warn us since you’re so smart.”
Dad looked up and gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry, ma’am. I meant no disrespect. You’ve been dragged through a knothole, I know. You are one brave farmer.”
“I’m an engineer.”
“Sorry again, then. What do you figure went wrong with the mechs?”
“Mechs? You’re ex-military, aren’t you?”
“I reckon we’re all military now, Emma. It’s Us and Them again. Always was, a little, anyway. Our nature and theirs.”
“Non-organics have saved us countless times.” Defensiveness crawled into her tone and I thought for a second she might cry if her anger didn’t win out.
“You’re not wrong, Emma,” I said, “but I think they’re done with saving us now.”
My father cleared his throat. “It’s NI, isn’t it?” The way he asked, it wasn’t really a question. He stared at the floor.
Emma nodded. “Yeah, I guess the slaves woke up. The computer that runs the place upgraded itself to Next Intelligence somehow.”
“Bots have woken up before,” I said. “Next Intelligence doesn’t mean they all turn into killers instantly.”
“It wasn’t instantaneous, Dante,” my father said. “Somebody had to turn the alarms off on the heaters on those tanks. The NI had to order a bot to sneak outside and cut those hoses. It was a plan that went into effect when the shatter storm hit.” He looked up at Emma. “Am I right?”
“At first, the ca
ptain thought there could be some kind of bug in the drones’ self-preservation matrix. I was outside when the slaughter started. Funny, I thought I was going to die when I volunteered to go outside in the storm. Outside was safer.”
“How many Domers were up there?”
“Hundreds. Lots of kids, too. We had the healthiest, best fed kids around. There were babies, too. We had the best birth rate of any dome city in the southwest. I radioed the Command Center about the sabotage of the hoses but I guess the captain was dead by then. It’s a shame. She was a good woman.”
The rumble of a large engine outside interrupted us. We listened as it slowly passed by. With the screen across the front of the store, we couldn’t see what was out there but it sounded heavy and menacing.
“Could that be a tank, maybe?” Emma asked. “Isn’t there a base nearby?”
My father shook his head. “Used to be an airbase. It’s gone now. They all lit out for parts unknown over a year ago. Reinforcements needed for the Euro Union was the word. I figure they’re all burnt to a crisp now.”
I tilted my head and strained to listen. There was definitely the heavy clank of a tread, but the engine was high above us. “It’s too high up for a tank. That’s a construction bot.”
Emma couldn’t conceal her fear and disappointment. “How do you know?”
“I’m an engineer, too,” I said. “Solar fields and wind turbines. That and the town is all that’s left. Believe it or not, people used to come here to live for the art and the lights in the sky.”
Despite her fear, Emma was curious. That’s when I decided to drop my wariness of strangers, go all in and like her. Curious people who ask questions and listen closely to the answers are smarter than most anybody.
“Lights in the sky!” she said. “The Marfa lights are still a thing? I thought that was just drones from the airbase and bullshit to pull in UFO tourism in the old days.”
“The lights are still there,” Dad said. “Twenty or so nights a year. Still a mystery.”
The heavy tread of the bot moved closer and I held my breath. I wondered how long it would be before the drone started tearing off roofs to hunt humans in hiding. It paused as the big engine cycled and idled above us.
Emma whispered, “Where’s the basement?”
My father shook his head. “No basement.”
“We’re screwed,” she said.
“Probably,” Dad said, “but when you think about it a little too long, we’re all born that way.”
7
Something crashed across the street.
“What was that?” Emma asked.
I’d been scared before but I began to sweat even more and it wasn’t just the heat. The terror got to me. “I think that’s the hydrogen fill-up. Or the church.”
The lights on my father’s cy-suit lit up and he stood. “We’ve got to move.”
“Maybe the bots won’t come in here,” Emma said.
“We’re in a store. A bot doesn’t have to be that smart to know this is a high value target. Grab as much as you can of what’s left on the shelves. Not so much that it will slow you down.”
Emma moved to a candy display and began filling her pockets. I did the same with the fake beef jerky. Even as I was doing it, I wondered if I was filling my pockets with poison. Jerky made me thirsty. That’s probably why everyone else had left it alone.
“What makes you think we’ll survive more than a few steps out that door?” Emma asked.
My father moved to the back door and removed the metal bar that wedged it shut. He pulled the door open an inch and peered out. He looked back at us and whispered. “I know you’re tired but this is a war zone. If you aren’t a refugee exiting the area, you don’t survive.”
“I’ve already been running, Steve,” Emma said. “This is where I ended up.”
“That just means you aren’t done running and this isn’t the end. We stick together. We work together. We live.”
Another crash down the street got us moving faster. I had two cans of apple juice in my front pants pockets. They slowed me down too much. I fished the cans out and held one in each hand.
My father held up the metal bar and grinned. “If need be, I’ll draw them away. Dante, get to our house. I’ll meet you there.”
“Then what?”
“We stay alive until the train comes.”
“What if it doesn’t stop tomorrow night, Dad?”
“It will.”
“Why?”
“Because it has to. We’re going to need that ride out of here.”
“But — ”
He waved away my objections. “Enough talk. Details are for later. We have to keep moving now.”
“Wait!” Emma gripped my arm. “Draw me a map or something. If Dante and I get separated, I’ll need to be able to find your house.”
My father opened the back door wide and stepped through. “Follow Dante and you won’t need a map. Dante is your map and you have to keep him alive to survive.”
“Dad? I — ”
“Don’t say goodbye, son. This isn’t goodbye.”
He ran to the right and disappeared. We went left.
The streets of Marfa are wide and sun-bleached. We ran along the back of buildings hoping not to be spotted. I tried to lead the way but when Emma extended her exo-stilts, her long strides kept her ahead of me. She peered around corners and motioned for me to come forward. Sometimes she shook her head and we dashed another way.
The crashing down Washington street continued. We soon found out why. Dead Domers covered the street but the carnage had just begun in Marfa.
A huge bot built for biodome construction towered above City Hall. The drone stood seven stories tall.
“Crane bot,” Emma told me.
The machine ripped through the roof as if it was made of paper.
My breath caught in my throat. I heard distant screams as the machine dug through the City Hall’s floors, collapsing the building with each savage movement of its four massive arms. As it activated all its thorium engines, it was loud, too.
We paused, watching in morbid fascination. I’d never seen a machine quite like it. The little crane drones that erected the solar and turbine fields were tall but they were delicate by comparison. The drones I’d worked with reminded me of pictures of blue herons. They were tall and strong, but each step was chosen carefully and placed delicately among the solar panels.
I couldn’t contain my amazement even as my stomach turned. “It has no wheels,” I told Emma. “How did it get here so fast?”
“Each arm has its own engine,” Emma said. “It can run over any terrain. It’s supposed to move among the domes, keeping up repairs and constructing new domes. At full speed in the desert, it looks like vids I’ve seen of mountain cats.”
“How big are the domes?”
“Big.”
More screams reached us. Apparently, many had sought shelter in Marfa’s City Hall. It had been an unlucky choice.
My pulse raced. I was too afraid to move. The street looked impossibly wide. How could we traverse it without being spotted?
The construction bot — I thought of it as a destruction bot by then — tossed a body over its shoulder. It was a woman, still alive and screaming even as she was picked up in pincers and thrown. The casual cruelty of the act was made worse as I watched the broken body fly through the air and hit the ground. Her high scream abruptly stopped with a sickening thud. The woman’s eyes seemed to look our way as she died. Maybe I imagined it. She was probably already dead but I thought I saw pleading in those eyes.
I forgot about the cans of apple juice in my hands until I dropped them in the dirt. I pressed my back against a wall and looked up at the dazzling sky. It seemed so incongruous that such terrible things could happen under cloudless azure. Marfa was drenched in sunlight. Soon it would be saturated with blood in equal measure. I couldn’t catch my breath.
Emma shrank the legs of her stilts until we were almost face to f
ace. She embraced me. “Dante. You are hyperventilating. Slow your breath. Here….” She adjusted her height again and my face was buried in her shoulder. “Rebreathing your carbon dioxide will slow you down and calm you a little.”
I didn’t care about carbon dioxide. I squeezed my eyes tight and pulled myself deeper into her embrace. I needed the softness of Emma’s body against me. There was nothing sexual in this need. It was sensual, however. It was softness and gentle human contact I craved. I was not a man holding a woman. I was a boy clinging to his mother.
Our clutch only lasted a few moments but my breathing began to slow. When we pulled away from each other, she wiped tears from my eyes and I nodded my thanks.
When we dared to look around the corner again, the big bot continued its grim work of destroying City Hall. Another, smaller drone appeared down the block.
“Sec bot!” Emma said.
“A what?”
“They patrol the perimeter of dome installations. They can kill with a sniper bullet at three kilometers. They keep scavengers out, the Domers in and the food supply safe.”
She peeked around the corner again and pulled back faster than before. “It’s rolling our way. Looks like it’s scanning storefronts.”
“For life signs, I suppose,” I said.
I grabbed Emma’s arm and pointed her in the right direction. I almost left the apple juice behind. However, the liquid might mean survival in the desert. I retraced a few steps and bent to pick up the cans.
I heard the whir of the bot’s electric motor as it zipped down the sidewalk. I heard a subtle beep. That’s when I knew I’d waited too long. The bot was just around the corner. It stopped for another scan. I tried to hold my breath and not make a sound but my heart hammered in my chest. My pulse sounded so loud in my ears I was sure the drone would detect it. I reached for the pistol at my waistband but I didn’t think that would do much against a bot, at least unless I knew where to shoot to do the most damage. I didn’t know.
The first blast destroyed the front of the building I leaned against. It had been a hair salon. The store hadn’t been open for a long time. I hadn’t seen the pretty sisters who ran it for a month or more. I knew they had lived with their mother and father above their salon in a little apartment. I didn’t know they were still there.
Robots Versus Humans (The Robot Planet Series Book 2) Page 3