by Scott Reeves
“Back on Molon, we called your type of world a ‘Hive World,” Andy had told Mal. He had mentioned it only as a matter of interest. But Mal had unexpectedly taken insult at it.
“Yeah, well, here on Caldor we call your type of world a ‘Fucked Up Goober Hick Inbreeder World,’” he had retorted.
After that, conversation had been sparse. Mal had attempted to restart it by telling of his most recent adventures in the ducts around Samala’s apartment. About the people he had encountered inside the apartments, and the gruesome way he had obtained the fatline phone.
But that conversation proved too gruesome for Andy, and it had likewise died out as well.
And now, their destination level was approaching.
Since they had no way to stop the platform’s descent, they would have to risk jumping about twelve feet onto a catwalk that bridged the Murray Building with the building to the west. Since this jump involved leaping across a gulf of miles, Andy was not looking forward to it. As a young boy back on Molon, he had spent many a day leaping across gullies and dry gulches. But he was older now, and more cognizant of the dangers inherent in such acts.
But Mal, it seemed, had other plans for them. Just as Andy, the older of the two and thus ostensibly in charge, at least in his mind, was cautioning Mal to make the leap to the catwalk carefully, Mal told him to shut up and listen.
“As soon we reach the top of the window and it starts rising up past us, I’m going to shoot it out. So stand back, and watch out for flying glass. And when the window’s out, get your ass through. We’ll only get one chance, so be quick about it.”
He cocked his force rifle and held it ready, aimed at the building.
No sooner had he done so than the platform reached the top of the window, which began sliding up past them.
It was a huge wall of glass steel, stretching far to either side of the platform. Mal began shooting at it, bursts of plasmic light spitting from the barrel of his rifle and splashing like a torrent of fiery water against the barrier separating them from the interior of the building.
Round after round he fired, each burst of energy further weakening the glass steel.
Finally, when the platform had gone just past the window and their heads were barely above the bottom edge of the window, it shattered under the strain. Most of the glass blew inward, both from the direction of Mal’s fire and from the inward pressure of the rushing wind. But Andy and Mal were still forced to shield their faces as a few shards blew back in their faces in a physics-defying shower.
That cost them precious time. When the air cleared, Mal quickly slung the force rifle over his shoulder, then leapt up onto the platform railing to catch the upwardly retreating lower lip of the window. By the time he got a firm hold on the lip, he was dangling precariously in midair, the platform having descended out from under him.
Meanwhile, Andy had not reacted quickly enough. The platform continued creeping downward, and now he wouldn’t be able to reach the window no matter how hard he tried. His only hope was to help Mal through the window, and fast.
So he leapt forward and shoved at Mal’s ass, pushing upward, straining.
It provided just the additional strength Mal needed. The young man levered himself up and over the lip. First his head and torso went in, disappearing from Andy’s view. Then his legs went in as well, and Mal was out of sight.
But only for an instant. He swung himself back around and dangled out the window from the waist up. He stretched his hands down toward Andy.
“Jump! Jump!” Mal urged.
Andy scrambled up onto the railing of the platform and stood precariously on its edge, stretching upward as far as he could. His upward-reaching fingertips were just barely able to touch Mal’s downward-reaching fingertips.
But only for an instant.
The platform crept downward, disconnecting them.
But somehow Mal managed to stretch a bit more. Their fingertips touched again, and then they were each able to grab the wrists of the other.
And then Andy was free of the platform, his weight supported entirely by Mal. The young man’s face knotted up with strain, his eyes closing, his skin flushing red. But he gritted his teeth, and actually managed to begin pulling Andy upward. Andy helped the process as best he could, his rubber-soled shoes finding an infinitesimal bit of traction against the rough metal side of the building and pushing him upward, somewhat aiding Mal’s effort.
Finally, Andy’s head reached the lip of the window, then his shoulders. After that, the going became a bit easier.
Moments later, Andy was up and over the lip, squirming through the window and finally collapsing on the floor beside Mal. Both lay there for long moments, breathing heavily and relishing the sudden abatement of muscular strain.
“Fuck,” Mal whispered between gasps. “Your help better be worth it, lard ass. Don’t make me wish I’d just let you drop.”
Andy grinned. By this time he had come to realize that the youth’s gruffness was only superficial, just the way he dealt with the harsh world into which he had been born. Mal had a good heart, and Andy suspected the youth had absorbed more of Samala’s Christian nature than he would be willing to admit, or perhaps was even consciously aware of.
Andy was looking forward to meeting this Samala. And not because he wanted, as Mal would have put it, “to stick his dick into her snatch.”
Finally they sat up and looked around.
They were in a large, spacious room, a few thousand square feet. There were couches and groups of chairs scattered throughout, arranged so that small groups of people might sit in casual conversation. There were several large holotanks in which one might watch the latest informational programs or tune in to live orgies that were occurring in nearby sex shops. Globes hung from the ceiling, covered with interface receptors so that one might jack into whatever private, off-the-Net virtual world had been instantiated within any particular globe. There was a bank of transmat food slots in one wall, from which one could order up any food known to Man.
“It’s a communal room,” Mal explained. “There are four of them that I know of on this level. I used to eat at this one all the time.”
He pointed at one of the hanging globes. “That’s a virtual garden world. Fairies and stuff. Old ruins, lots of vegetation. Very romantic place. Samala loves that sort of shit, and so we used to jack in there together every few days.”
Andy looked around. This would have been a nice room, he supposed, if it weren’t for all the dead bodies scattered around. The dead, bloody bodies that were riddled with bullet holes, flesh shredded and lying in splotches of dried blood where their lives had bled out. Pale white maggots wiggled about in the open wounds.
The place stank, and flies buzzed everywhere, feeding on both the maggots and the moldering bodies.
“There are no zombies in here,” Andy noted. “Why not?”
Mal shrugged. “We’re lucky there aren’t,” he said. “Otherwise we would have had an even more difficult time getting in than we actually did.”
But they found out why there were no risen dead in the room when they tried to leave it through a wide door in the wall to the left of the window. A door that led into one of the main hallways of this level, according to Mal.
A robocop swung into view from where it had been stationed beside the door. Its gun turrets whined as they swiveled around and locked onto Andy and Mal.
Andy stopped dead in his tracks.
Mal did as well, but only for a moment. Then he smiled and waved at the robocop. “Zort!” he shouted jovially, as if greeting a good friend.
“Voiceprint and facematch achieved,” the robocop said in its mechanical voice. “Identity confirmed: Malfred Gil. Threat level zero.”
The gun turrets stood down, and the robocop turned away from them, resuming its station beside the door, covering the hallway beyond the room.
Mal grinned at Andy, who wore a dumbfound expression.
“But...I thought all the roboc
ops went dormant when the planetary AI crashed,” Andy protested.
“That’s just it,” Mal explained. “I should have seen this coming. Zort’s not a robocop. He’s a private security droid owned by the management of this communal room. He’s not connected to Mac. His AI is hardwired on a chip inside his head. He’s got no Net interface, either, so that no one can hack him. Has his own fusion core power source, too.”
“And he’s programmed to defend this room,” Andy said, slowly working it out. “That’s why there aren’t any of the crazies in here.”
Mal nodded. “And there’s got to be more like him, scattered throughout the building. Maybe we can use them somehow.”
Andy shrugged his shoulders skeptically. “Maybe. But aren’t robots supposed to have some kind of inhibition against killing people?”
Mal barked a laugh. “Man, you really are from Goober Planet, aren’t you?”
“How does it know who to shoot and who not to shoot, then?” Andy persisted.
“There you go thinking too much again,” Mal gruffed. “What the fuck does it matter? But since you’re asking such a stupid question, let me give you some instructions for out there.” He waved an arm at the hallway beyond the door. “If something comes running at you, assume it’s not friendly and shoot it.”
Andy’s stomach suddenly rose into his throat. “I...um...I left my rifle back on the platform.”
Mal heaved a heavy sigh, then shouted at the ceiling: “Unbelievable!”
Then he calmed down and headed toward the door, waving Andy to follow. “Well, come on. We’ll probably be able to find you a new weapon along the way. And if not, well, I suppose you’re at least good for keeping me company.”
“But I’m no Samala’s snatch,” Andy said dryly. He knew God would forgive him for the crude humor. In seminary back on Molon, he had been taught that when ministering to lost sheep, sometimes one had to communicate at their level to get through.
Mal laughed. “Definitely not.”
They passed through the door and into the wide hallway beyond. To their left was the entrance/exit onto the catwalk that spanned the gulf to the neighboring building. To their right, the hallway penetrated deeper into the heart of the building, farther than they could see due to the dim, flickering lights...
...and the zombies shuffling along, blocking the more distant areas from view.
Mal gripped his force rifle resolutely. “Well, nothing for it but to push on,” he said, though the apprehensive way he eyed the horde of zombies filling the hallway belied his gung-ho exterior.
The hallway was lined with shops of all sorts: grocers, sex shops, houses of love, drug parlors...A typical commercial district.
“Just a second,” Andy said. He felt that he needed to prove that he could still be helpful, and that he wasn’t an idiot, despite how recent events might have made it seem otherwise.
So he turned to Zort and addressed it. “Zort,” he said in a tone of command. “You will accompany us and protect us.”
Mal began nodding, seeing the wisdom of Andy’s idea.
The nearby zombies were already beginning to realize that fresh meat had appeared on the scene. Living meat. The tide of zombies began washing their way.
But the mechanical man’s motors merely whirred as they tracked the changing course of nearby targets: the equivalent of a shrug, Andy supposed.
“Negative,” the tin voice responded. “This unit may not leave its post without proper authorization. This unit does not recognize your authority to grant such authorization. Please stand aside. This unit is tracking multiple approaching targets. You risk fatal injury if you maintain your current position. Carvat Corporation cannot be held responsible for such fatal injury...”
But Andy and Mal, heeding the warning from the first words, were already racing down the hallway, deeper into the interior of the building, and so did not hear the mechanical man’s final words.
They did, however, hear a continuous report of gunshots as the robot opened fire on the risen dead.
Andy stayed in Mal’s wake as the young man ran defense through the mass of zombies. His force rifle spat continuous zags of plasma at the creatures in his path. Each zombie that was struck vanished in a flash of whirling sparks and pulverized flesh that hit their skin as a light mist as they raced through the space that had been cleared.
The gunfire from the mechanical man assisted them, boring into the crowd of zombies around them with a frequency Mal was unable to match, shredding the zombies with old-style bullets spat out at thousands of rounds per second by state-of-the-art machine guns.
The only problem was, the robot was firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Andy and Mal could just as easily be hit as the zombies around them. They knew that, and so after a particularly close call in which several bullets whistled past Andy’s head, grazing a searing trail of fire above his left ear, the two of them dodged into a side corridor and ducked into a shadowy alcove that had been designed for a few people to take a brief rest from their shopping.
They dropped down onto the leather sofa that ringed the wall of the small, half-circular alcove. They sprawled there for long moments, panting from their exertion. The distant sound of the mechanical man’s rat-at-tat gunfire could still be heard, as well as the squishing thud of bullets impacting undead flesh.
Mal idly vaporized the few zombies in the corridor who came at them, until no more came.
“How much further is it?” Andy asked between gasps.
“You don’t want to know,” Mal replied. “Too far, I think. I don’t know if we can make it. Not with that metal bastard out there shooting at anything that moves.”
“We didn’t come this far to give up, did we?” Andy asked.
Mal hesitated. Then: “Well, no...but...”
“But nothing,” Andy said. “You have to have faith that God is using you to rescue one of His children.”
“Don’t you fucking start,” Mal grumbled.
“What do you want me to say?” Andy asked. “I’m trying to motivate you.”
“You could try telling me to think of her snatch,” Mal said. “Not that religious bullshit.”
“What the difference?” Andy asked. “It sounds like her snatch is your religion.”
“So you’re saying my god is a snatch,” Mal said.
Andy shrugged.
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Mal said. “It sounds kind of pathetic.” But he perked up. “But right now, it’s good enough motivation for me.”
He stood and cocked his force rifle, forcing a new energy pellet into the chamber. “Lock and load.” He smiled down at Andy.
Just then, a bank of transmat pads across the corridor from them hummed into life. There was a brief sparkle of energy, and a woman materialized on one of the pads. She must have been running when she had entered the transmitter, because she emerged running at full tilt, faster than Mal and Andy were able to react.
She slammed into Mal, knocking him back onto Andy, and bit into his shoulder, her teeth clamping down and sinking deep as she attempted to close her mouth and take a bite out of the youth.
Andy, crushed beneath the weight of both of them and still stunned from the suddenness of the attack, could do nothing to help. But Mal struggled to push her off, a task at which he failed due to the tenacious hold she had on his shoulder. He managed to bring the muzzle of the force rifle up just enough to squeeze the trigger and discharge a burst of plasma into her belly.
She screamed as the middle portion of her body was vaporized. Her lower torso fell away to the side, while her upper swung freely around the focal point of Mal’s shoulder, her upper teeth having remained embedded even during her scream. Her torso squirmed and writhed, her fingers raking bloody gouges into his face.
“Get up!” Andy shouted, trying to push the panicked Mal off of him so that he could help. But the youth was instinctively scrambling backward, away from the woman, which only crushed him further against Andy.
But Mal still had the presence of mind to bring his rifle up once again and discharge a larger burst into the woman’s upper torso. She vaporized, her embedded teeth searing pain into Mal’s shoulder as their component atoms were burned from existence.
Mal finally regained his wits. He pushed himself up and out of the alcove, freeing Andy.
“Godammit!” he shouted, pacing a short distance away and then returning. “I’m fucked, I’m fucked!”
Andy tried to touch Mal’s wounded shoulder, to get a better look at it, but Mal fended him off.
“Does it hurt?” Andy asked.
“No, it doesn’t fucking hurt!” Mal shouted. “And that’s what scares me. Why doesn’t it hurt?”
He paused in his pacing to kick the woman’s lower torso, which was still twitching about on the ground, seemingly trying in vain to get up and walk away. “Bitch!” he shouted as he kicked repeatedly.
“It was Emilia Hocking,” Andy said.
Mal looked blankly at him. “Who?”
“Emilia Hocking. Doctor Dmitriyano’s secretary. I got a good look at her face while she was...well..” He knew he would never forget the stare of those undead eyes as they had looked at him over Mal’s shoulder. He had had the perfect seat to get a good, clear look at her face.
“What the fuck does it matter who she was?” Mal shouted, resuming his manic pace.
Andy watched helplessly, hoping that the youth would soon calm down. He glanced about, keeping an eye out for zombies, something for which Mal obviously couldn’t be relied upon in his present mental condition.
Finally Mal stopped pacing and shoved his rifle into Andy’s hands. He stepped back and took a deep breath, bracing himself.
“Shoot me,” Mal commanded.
Andy looked from the rifle to Mal. “What?”
“Shoot me,” Mal repeated. “I’ve been bitten. I’m fucked. I don’t want to turn into one of those things. Shoot me.”
Andy tried to give the rifle back to Mal. “I’m not going to shoot you!” he protested.
Mal suddenly winced and doubled over. “It’s starting,” he muttered. “I can feel it. I’m starting to change. Shit happened quick.” He looked up at Andy, his eyes pleading. “Shoot me, please.”