by Scott Reeves
Mal pointed to their left. In the far distance, almost where the lines of the corridor met at the vanishing point, Bin saw the bank of elevators that traveled up and down the central core of the building. The elevators where they were supposed to meet their new army friends.
After seeing all the blood-thirsty people in the corridor, he decided that they were going to need all the friends they could get.
And when he heard the pneumatic hissing of a robocop clopping up behind them, he knew he would have to sacrifice one friend if he wanted to survive to meet up with the others.
Without hesitation, without even looking at the robocop behind them, he grabbed Mal by the shoulders and flung the kid out into the corridor. Trusting that the robocop’s targeting system would focus on the kid’s rapid movement, Bin then raced away up the corridor toward the elevators, diving right into the heaviest concentration of the crazies, to put as many of them as possible between him and the robocop.
Behind him he heard the robocop’s gun erupt into action.
Malfred Gil
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
6:07 PM Planetary Standard Time
Mal was outraged at the unexpected betrayal, but was too busy fleeing the robocop to curse Bin.
Momentum from Bin’s shove sent him stumbling out to the center of the corridor. He tripped over a fallen body, and when he tried to get up, he slipped in the blood that soaked the floor and fell hard on his ass.
The robocop’s gears hummed as it swiveled, tracking his slightest movement. Why hadn’t it fired yet? Was it toying with him?
He scrambled to get up, finally managing to gain his feet without slipping again. Then he took off, racing away from the robocop. Then he realized that he had gone the wrong direction; he was running away from the elevators!
“Shit,” he panted breathlessly.
The robocop began spitting fire at him. Bodies fell all around him as they were cut down in the crossfire, dying a second death that would perhaps be permanent this time. Somehow he managed not to get hit.
He zigzagged down the corridor, trying to dodge both the rapid-fire artillery dogging his heels as well as the psychos who pounced at him from the sides. Then excruciating pain erupted in his left calf as the robocop’s barrage caught up with him.
He screamed as his leg crumpled beneath him and he hit the floor hard. Battling to stay conscious, he flipped onto his back to face the approaching robocop. The machine-man had continued firing after he fell, cutting down everything within hundreds of feet of him, leaving him as the sole living, moving thing amidst a sea of corpses.
The robocop ceased firing and chugged forward until it towered above him. It looked down at him. Every gun on the giant machine was pointed straight at him. He trembled helplessly at its feet.
And then it chuckled. The robocops were capable of speech. And if a robocop spoke, it was basically Mac, the planetary AI, doing the talking. Or, in this case, the chuckling. It was a demented chuckle, the sort of chuckle he had always imagined a serial killer might make before slitting the throat of a victim.
If there had been any doubt before, there was no longer: Mac had gone insane just like everyone else.
The robcop was playing with him.
Mal closed his eyes. “Just get it over with,” he mumbled. His calf was ablaze with pain, and if Mac didn’t shoot him, he thought he would surely black out.
One of the robocop’s shoulder turrets swiveled completely around before targeting him once again, as if calling attention to the fact that it would be the one to deal the killing shot.
This is it, then, Mal thought, steeling himself. He tried to imagine Samala’s sweet snatch around his dick. If he was about to die, that’s what he wanted his last thought to be.
That’s when the lights went out, plunging the corridor into pitch blackness. There was a high-pitched whine that rapidly cycled down into inaudible low frequencies, as power left the robocop and it went dormant.
He sighed in relief.
But his relief was short lived. In the darkness all around him, he heard movement, and the sniffing of hunters trying to catch the scent of prey.
To catch his scent.
Rodor Batsalam
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
6:10 PM Planetary Standard Time
Rodor surveyed the room in which he had taken refuge. It was stacked with crates and machinery; some sort of storage room. There was another door at the far end, in the wall that faced the main hallway. If he stepped out that door, he would be downstream of the robocop.
He had an idea.
He went across the room and hit the button that opened the door. It slid aside, revealing a hallway teeming with infected. He called out to them, “Hey, come and get me! Lunch over here!”
And the infected started lumbering toward him. Of course, so did the robocop, but that’s what he wanted: to draw it away from the side hallway and the immense box upon which all their plans hinged.
He ducked back inside the room and the door hissed shut. Beyond the wall, he heard the muffled sound of gunfire as the robocop blasted away at the infected. Or perhaps at the door. Either possibility was good, because that meant the robocop’s attention was no longer on the side hallway and the immense box.
Rodor went back to the other door and poked his head out to survey the damage.
The box was intact, as was the chest of rifles!
Two of his soldiers were bloody messes upon the hallway floor, having been shredded in the robocop’s gunfire. But at least the box was safe.
Sighing in relief, he leaned back against the doorjamb, pulled out his fatline phone, intending to call each of his men, to check on their safety and decide how they would reassemble and get past the lurking robocop.
That’s when the lights went out, and with it, all the power. The nearby sound of heavy gunfire ceased as the robocop went dormant, solving their problem.
Rodor and Drake had figured that the planetary power grid would probably go down when doomsday struck, and they had made preparations. They had packed halogen floodlights and cold fusion batteries in the chest along with the rifles.
But the floodlights wouldn’t be needed just yet. Rodor counted off the seconds: “Ten, nine, eight…”
When he reached one, right on cue the lights flickered back on, albeit at much reduced illumination, as the Murray building’s backup batteries kicked in. Most skyscrapers on the planet were equipped with emergency backup batteries that only powered certain systems, and only for a few days.
Robocops weren’t tied into the backup batteries. They were powered and controlled directly by Mac, who was himself powered by the planetary power grid. If the planetary grid went down, Mac and everything controlled by him went down. He didn’t have a backup power supply; his designers had figured that if something catastrophic enough to take out the planetary grid had occurred, they didn’t want an AI around to hamper small-scale recovery efforts.
Rodor cheered. Mac was down for the count!
He wanted someone to celebrate with, so he began dialing his men. One by one they answered, and he told them the coast was clear. They emerged from various rooms along the hallway where they had taken refuge.
Together they cheered and slapped each other’s backs. If Mac had had a body, they would have danced around it and stomped its head in. Sure it was a small victory, and attained through no action of theirs. But it was victory nonetheless, a sign that the poisoned cesspool of civilization was collapsing around their very heads.
When they sounded off, one female soldier was unaccounted for, in addition to the two he had noticed earlier. They did a brief search of the hallway, and found a smear of blood and guts on the floors and walls, several hundred feet back along their path. Apparently the missing soldier hadn’t found an unlocked room to duck into and had simply been blasted by the robocop as she fled deeper into the side hallway.
They briefly mourned the two men and the woman, and then trudged back
to the immense box and the weapons chest.
One of the new recruits, Torl Welland, had been grazed by the robocop’s blast. He had a big chunk missing out of the side of his left upper arm. The wound was bleeding profusely, and Rodor dressed it as well as he could, but the man would need a doctor.
Unfortunately, the only one of them who had had any medical training was the dead woman. She had been a nurse before joining the PRA.
They just had to hope that they might run into a doctor before Torl’s wound became infected.
Speaking of infected, those out in the main hallway had by now become aware of Rodor and his small army, and were shuffling along toward the intersection of the two hallways.
Rodor and three others stepped out into the main hallway and began vaporizing anything that moved.
“Let’s move out!” Rodor shouted at the six soldiers behind him in the side hallway. Two of them picked up the chest and carried it slung between them. Two others picked up the reigns of the immense box and began dragging it forward. The remaining two joined Rodor and the others and began vaporizing zombies.
They moved out into the main hallway, Rodor and three soldiers in the lead, clearing the way, four in the middle carrying the chest and dragging the box, and two bringing up the rear, fending off any infected who approached from the rear. Torl was one of these latter, performing his task admirably despite his wounded arm. Rodor thought the man was a real trooper, and made a mental note to give the man a commendation when things had calmed down a bit.
Up ahead through the dim, flickering light, the central elevators beckoned.
“Not much further, ladies and gentleman,” he said to encourage his soldiers. “When we hit those elevators, we’re home free until the rooftop.”
He blasted away with his rifle. Dispatching infected was quite satisfying. Pull trigger, zap, poof, infected gone. Pull trigger, zap, poof, infected gone. A simple, repetitive task, but one of the most satisfying he had ever performed. These infected were the detritus of the previous civilization, rejected by God and not allowed into the new world order. Each infected that was vaporized not only cleared ground toward the elevators, it also cleared the way for the new and better civilization that would arise from the ashes.
“Steady, men, and onward.” Rodor advanced step by step.
Pull trigger, zap, poof, infected gone.
Nothing could stand in his way.
Shops lined the hallway. Cafes, grocers, sex and drug parlors. Inside the shops, outside in the hallways, everywhere: infected. Shambling along; feasting on one another; veering toward Rodor and his army. The hallway was infested with them.
Blood was everywhere, smeared across the carpet, the walls, the ceiling dozens of feet above. Body parts too: half-eaten heads on the floor stared unblinking up at them; bodies were split open, innards strewn about. And shambling amongst the mess, infected people, risen from the dead.
Pull trigger, zap, poof, infected gone.
One of the women behind him vomited loudly.
“Steady, soldier,” he said gently.
Halfway to the elevators, they came across a storefront that was shut up tight. Metal shutters were rolled down over its windows, and its double doors were frosted over.
A sign above the door read, “Kulash Medical Clinic.”
Rodor halted his procession in front of the clinic. The way the clinic was secured gave him hope that there might be a doctor alive inside. Someone who could help Torl.
While his soldiers fended off the infected, Rodor rapped the butt of his rifle against the door. “Hey!” he shouted. “Anyone in there? We could use a doctor out here.”
There was no response. He rapped again.
A few moments later, he could see shadows moving through the frosted glass. Someone was alive in there.
“Who are you?” came a man’s muffled voice through the doors.
“Rodor Batsalam, former assistant to the Prime Minister.”
“Are you infected?”
Rodor thought it was a ridiculous question. Would an infected be rapping on the door, asking for a doctor? “Of course not,” he said. As he spoke with the man, there was a continual crackling hiss as his men continued vaporizing the infected.
“How many of you are there?” the muffled voice asked.
“Ten, including myself. We have weapons to use against the infected. Can you open your doors? It’s safe for the moment. One of my men needs a doctor.”
There were several loud clicks as bolts in the doors were withdrawn. Then they swung open just enough to permit someone to squeeze in or out. A man peered out through the narrow opening. Black hair, goatee, old-fashioned glasses framing beady little eyes.
“I’m Doctor Kulash Dmitriyano,” he said. “Send your man in. I’ll fix him up.”
“We’re heading to the rooftop,” Rodor said. “You want to come with us?”
By then Torl had come forward. Kulash opened the door wider and allowed the wounded man to enter.
Through the doors, Rodor glimpsed a small reception room. In one corner was an obviously infected woman continually jumping toward Kulash, only to be sent reeling back by a wall of light that was only visible each time she impacted against it.
“Who’s the woman in the force cube?” Rodor asked.
“A specimen to study. I take it Caldor is lost?” Kulash asked.
Rodor nodded.
“Then I need to get her off planet, to a research facility with the proper resources where I might develop a cure. I assume rescue ships will be coming?”
“Most likely.”
“Then yes indeed I would like to come with you. I’ll treat your man, you help me get her to the rooftops. Deal?”
“Absolutely,” Rodor said.
Kulash pointed to a door on the rear wall of the reception room and urged Torl to go through it. “Back there,” he said. “Let’s get you fixed up.”
Half an hour later, Torl’s arm had been healed and they resumed their march to the elevators. This time it was much slower going, with the inconvenience of hauling the force cubed woman added to that of the immense box and the weapons chest.
He took a brief break from shooting infected to call Malfred Gil and let him know they were almost to the elevators. He hadn’t talked to the young man since that first call. He hoped the recruit was still safe.
The phone rang numerous times. Ominously, there was no answer. He closed the phone and put it back into his pocket.
With renewed vigor, he threw himself into vaporizing infected and shouted, “Let’s pick up the pace, people. We have a young recruit who may need our help.”
A short time later, the corridor they were traveling emptied out into an enormous circular room. At the center of the room were the elevators. These consisted of a cluster of huge upright cylinders that ran the entire vertical length of the skyscraper and its subsurface components. There were ten enclosed shafts altogether, with a mixture of cargo cars and passenger cars.
The average citizen would not have been able to access the elevators. But since Rodor was a government employee (or rather had been a government employee, back when there had been a government), getting into an elevator was simply a matter of swiping his thumbprint across a reader beside a door and waiting for a car to arrive.
Moments later, they were inside a cargo elevator, safe, secure, and shielded from the infected by thick walls of metal. As they rose upward, they all breathed sighs of relief and sagged against the walls, having earned a much needed respite.
Malfred Gil
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
6:10 PM Planetary Standard Time
Mal lay on the ground at the robocop’s feet after the lights had gone out. Hearing the psychos sniffing around in the darkness for him, he knew it was just a matter of time before they found him.
Thinking quickly, he grabbed one of the nearby dead people that had been gunned down by the robocop and pulled the body on top of him. He needed time to think, to cons
ider his next course of action, and he thought the dead person might cover his scent, hiding him from the psychos and giving him the time he needed.
It worked.
He lay there, trembling, as he heard the psychos squelching across the bloody carpet. They moved past him on all sides, but none bothered him.
His left calf ached from where the robocop had shot him. He didn’t know how bad the wound was since he couldn’t see it in the darkness. For all he knew, he could be bleeding out his life as he lay there.
Then the lights came back on, but dimmer than before. Emergency backup power, he figured.
Mal stared anxiously up at the robocop, but it remained dormant, a towering hulk of steel, pistons, and flesh, bristling with weapons.
Not so tough now, are you, big guy? he wanted to say. But he kept his mouth shut. Noise would alert the psychos, and his urge to taunt the robocop wasn’t stronger than his urge to survive.
The psycho people were all around him, some of them leaping past, most of them shambling slowly along as if their limbs were heavier than lead. The weight of the corpse bore down on top of him, its shredded flesh dangling around him like a curtain, dripping blood and other noxious bodily fluids. He felt the filth soaking through his clothing, oozing warmly down his skin and sending chills racing along his spine. He choked back vomit, fought the urge to throw the vile thing from him and retch out his empty stomach.
But right then it was the only thing keeping him alive, so he lay limply beneath the gruesome shelter of the corpse. For the first time in his life, he actually prayed to Samala’s God to deliver him from this evil.
He almost laughed at that. Had Samala’s years of haranguing him with her incessant testimony finally born fruit? It had been something he’d had to tolerate to get his dick into her snatch, her preaching seemingly forgotten as soon as he’d gotten inside. But it seemed her ministry hadn’t been forgotten after all. Now, he suddenly found, it was the only hope he had left.
Please, God, he thought with all his might, eyes squeezed shut, leaking tears.