by Michael Todd
“There has to be a way we can get to the armory!” Ava said. “If we all get a weapon and surprise those scorpions, we might be able to get them out. I know there are a lot of them—okay, a shit-ton might be a better phrase—but they’re easy to kill. We can do this.”
“As much as I’d like to save your friends, they’re ultimately irrelevant to the greater cause,” Dr. Kessler said. He didn’t sound like he wanted to save her friends at all. “It will be unfortunate that Mr. Gunnar will most likely perish as he has been invaluable in fine-tuning the controls of my suit. But alas, a replacement will have to be found.”
A plan formed in Ava’s brain—a dumb, stupid plan that was hopelessly crazy. She hoped she’d live to tell her friends about it. She straightened her shoulders, gave the carbine to Wilson, and said in her best impression of Manny, “I have an idea, mates.”
Judging from the faces of the forty or so desperate people around her, the impression had been reasonably good. They all looked at her like she was fucking crazy, which was basically standard for one of Manny’s plans.
Chapter Nineteen
Part of Ava was pleased to see Dr. Kessler so off balance. Another part of her wished he had more confidence in her, especially considering she was the only one in the room with a plan to save them. Not to mention that the crux of it rested on her marching into what would almost surely be her death.
“The motion controls should be fixed. Use the uh…uh…”
“Foot pedals?” she suggested.
“Yes, foot pedals. Sure. Apply more pressure to the right to turn right, more left for left. If you press one, it will strafe in that direction. Are you sure about this?” The scientist circled his machine and fiddled with connections, adjusted panels, and checked gauges.
“The way I see it, Doc, I’m the second most qualified person to drive this thing in the room right now.”
“Well then, who is the most qualified?”
“He’s a chickenshit coward who has more brains than courage. Have you met him?”
Dr. Kessler looked down and swallowed before he met her glance. “Maybe that’s fair.” Damn it was nice to see him sweat.
“This is no time for self-pity, Doc. How do I work the weapons?”
“This, er…”
“Joystick?”
“Sure, yes. The joystick controls the mounted gun. These two handles control the arms. Hold them and use your arms as you wish. The suit will mimic the actions with its robot arms. The switch on the left handle extends the sword, and the three buttons on the right control the weapons mounted on the right arm. The blue is—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll only fire with one until it’s out of ammo and move onto the next. It isn’t like I’ll have time to check the color-key.”
Gunfire from the hangar changed to the sound of explosions. It seemed that the soldiers outside had the same sort of plan.
“And you’ve fixed all the problems?”
“Yes. Almost certainly.”
“Almost?”
“Nothing is ever certain.”
“Great time to argue about existentialism,” Ava snorted. She found that pretending she wasn’t scared seemed to help the people around her. Too bad she couldn’t stop shaking like a leaf. She slapped the button that closed the front of the suit. The metal and glass cage descended over her and she promptly pushed the foot pedals and walked into one of the tables.
“Adjust the pressure to turn.”
“Yeah, yeah. Open the damn door and let’s get this thing over with. Is everyone clear on the plan?”
Wilson stepped forward, the carbine in his hand. The other civilians were behind him except for the two cooks who still pushed themselves against the door to the hallway. The edges of the door slowly turned to splinters and claws began to push through. One of the cooks chopped at them with his knife and severed the tips, but this didn’t seem to deter the attackers. It merely made the room smell worse.
“Dr. Kessler opens the door to the hangar,” Wilson said loudly enough for the assembled people to all hear. “You go out there and squash scorpions like a boss and hopefully, trap them between you and those soldiers. As soon as we see an opening—or in sixty seconds, whichever comes first—we run through the hangar and to the armory, then get back to you as quickly as possible.”
“I still think this will leave the machine shop vulnerable,” Dr. Kessler protested. “There will be nothing to stop those scorpions from getting in here.”
“Right, which means you’d better damn well stick with the rest of them,” she said.
Ava had no real expectation that the plan would work, but it was better than watching her friends die while they waited for a mob of ravenous arachnids to break the door down. In that scenario, she might be able to save herself considering she was in the suit, but she’d have to live with not only letting her friends die but other people too. So, suicidal insanity it was.
“Open the door, Dr. Kessler.”
The entire wall of windows raised slowly like a garage door.
When Dr. Kessler had said there was a direct entrance into the hangar, she’d imagined that she’d have to crash through a tiny door frame and would probably fall over before she was swarmed by scorpions. Walking through a door big enough for a tank to drive through was a much more manageable first step. There was a moment of panic when she thought the scorpions might surge toward the civilians, but lucky her, they all still focused intently on her friends.
“Damnit! Damnit the door’s jammed!” the scientist shouted from behind her. “It’s stuck open.”
Of course it was. Well, there was no time like the present to get into position then.
Ava rotated the top of the body to face the seething mass of scorpions that fought to climb onto the JLTV that Peppy, Manny, and Gunnar stood on top of. The other soldiers had taken refuge on a tank, an airplane, and a busted-up helicopter—pitiful islands of humans in a sea of ravenous arachnids from hell.
“It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory,” she muttered to herself, raised the right arm of the robot suit at the scorpions, and fired.
Three creatures literally exploded. Apparently, she’d pressed the button that fired the giant freaking bullets and now decided she’d stick with that.
She started forward and at first, pushed the pedals like they were pumps. The suit stopped and started until she realized that it was more like the accelerator in a car. She pushed both pedals down and held them there. The legs responded and the robot suit clumped toward the scorpions with her inside like a creamy surprise in a crispy cookie shell.
Confident with the movement now, she adjusted the robot arm slightly and fired again, and again, and again. Each shot carved a deadly path through her targets. It seemed that nothing stopped the super-bullets except the ground itself. Ava made a note to always aim slightly down. If she hit one of the vehicles her friends were on, it would no doubt make short work of the metal.
As she fired, she angled her approach toward the creatures and but also the hangar doors to the outside. She wanted them to notice her and move away from the trapped soldiers.
In her peripheral vision, she saw the civilians dart out of the machine shop and race to the door through which she’d first entered the hallways. The armory was in the opposite direction of the mass of scorpions that had them pinned down in the room.
A violent crash sounded behind her. Shit! The scorpions had made it into the machine room. She tried to swivel the top of the robot suit one hundred eighty degrees like she’d seen Gunnar do effortlessly but only succeeded in hopping in a lazy circle.
The civilians had cleared the room and the scorpions didn’t follow them. Instead, they headed toward the stairs that led up the catwalk that ran through the hangar. But why? She scowled, a little confused until she saw Dr. Kessler racing up the steps. Coward though he was, she didn’t want him to die so she pressed one of the other buttons on the gun arm of the robot suit.
Her
aim was less than perfect and instead of the explosive landing in the throng of pursuers, it thudded into the bottom of the stairs and blew them to smithereens.
The scientist threw himself onto the catwalk and landed heavily, picked himself up, and peered over the edge to the scene below him.
Luckily for him, the scuttling mob made no attempt to bridge the gap to the dangling remains of the stairway. Instead, they turned and rushed at Ava.
She fired another explosive, but this one went over the scorpions, landed in the machine shop, and blew the room to smithereens.
“Note to self, the grenades or whatever are hard to aim,” she muttered and felt a clank against the back of the suit.
She rotated somehow—although she had no idea what she did—and froze. One of the scorpions that had attacked Manny and company had made it to her.
Joy. The plan was working.
The arachnid’s tail struck the robot suit again and again. The armor protected her long enough for her to pluck the scorpion off her legs and crush it between the robot’s three fingers. Now that was satisfying.
Unfortunately, her stupid plan had worked better than expected. Most of the swarm had now redirected their focus to her. Great.
Ava pressed the third button on the right arm and activated what she thought was the machine gun. She moved the robot arm in an arc to spray as many of the enemy with bullets as possible. She didn’t think it would deter them, but she hoped she was wrong. She wasn’t. The bastards merely increased their efforts.
Ava knew from the next series of clanking sounds that the creatures from the hallway had reached her and currently scaled the suit.
She tried to knock them off with her right arm but that didn’t work as she couldn’t twist it into the right angle. With her left hand, she pressed the button to extend the blade. She swung wildly and each strike sliced through scorpion flesh and spattered goo in every direction.
When she tried to raise her right arm to fire, it felt sluggish and heavy. She cursed at the creatures that had climbed onto the arm.
Ava gritted her teeth and fired the machine gun mounted on the wrist. It obliterated two of them but one continued to crawl up the arm.
“Shit.”
She grabbed the joystick that controlled the gun on top of her suit, swiveled it to aim at the scorpion and fired.
The gun obliterated the scorpion and much of the robot’s arm.
The hand, with its three mounted weapons, fell noisily and exploded.
Ava, robot suit and all, was catapulted away by the force of the blast. She tumbled for a couple of feet and landed on her stomach.
The arachnids crawled over her back. Sharp pings sounded as their tails tried to stab the suit over and over. It would only take one to get through to end her pathetic attempt to save her friends and everyone else at Wall Two.
She grabbed the robot’s controls for the arms, retracted the sword, and tried to push herself up but only managed to roll on to her back. A little distracted, she’d forgotten that she’d blown the suit’s right hand off.
Fortunately, she’d squished the scorpions who’d crawled over the suit. Unfortunately, there were still hundreds more.
Ava wiggled and shoved until she got the left arm under the bulk of the suit, then pressed the button that extended the blade. The thrust as the metal emerged pushed her clumsily to her feet.
She grabbed the joystick that controlled the top-mounted gun and proceeded to obliterate the arachnids that continued to mass against her.
Her grin faded after about ten seconds when she ran out of ammo.
With a muttered curse, she squinted through the goo-smeared glass. She had no idea whether Manny and the others were safe or where the civilians were.
Still, it was time for her to make a break for it. With one arm damaged on the suit and her remaining weapon out of bullets, it would simply be suicide to remain where she was.
Ava pressed the foot pedals and attempted to steer the robot out into the desert. In response, a dull thud emitted from somewhere in the machine and immediately, smoke began to fill her little chamber.
“Dr. Kessler, you piece of crap. You said you fixed this.” She pounded at the controls and the suit ignored her. It lurched and stilled continuously as it tried to turn and failed each time like a water sprinkler that had jammed.
She used the left arm to wipe the guts from the glass.
Hundreds of arachnids milled and scuttled all around her. Most tried to scramble up the suit and while they effectively shoved their fellows aside in their eagerness, it wouldn’t be long before the ungainly robot fell before their combined onslaught. She drew a deep breath and realized that she’d been a complete fool to think she could save everyone.
When she peered through the goo-spattered glass again, she clearly saw that she hadn’t even managed to save her friends. They were still trapped on their vehicles by the surging, ravenous monsters.
“Damn,” Ava said and tried to prepare herself for what seemed inevitable. What a fucking useless way to go.
Someone yelled and the hangar exploded with gunfire. Startled, she realized that the soldiers weren’t responsible for the barrage.
Thankfully, the stupid suit had now ceased its futile efforts to turn and she was able to look to where Wilson, the carbine still in his hands, led the civilians who were now armed to the teeth. The small group packed more heat than Peppy and Gunnar usually did and seemed more than happy to use what they’d taken from the armory.
They rushed into the hangar and fired relentlessly at the scorpions that continued to attack the soldiers. Two of them threw grenades with way better accuracy than Ava ever could, and the resulting explosion annihilated a wide swath of scorpions near the JLTV.
The creatures spun away from the soldiers and hurtled toward the new threat.
Gunnar scrambled off the JLTV. He opened a hatch at the back, extracted a box of ammo, and affixed a long line of bullets to the mounted machine gun.
He grinned as he released a barrage into the swarm that now converged on the civilians.
Ava hadn’t seen Manny disappear, but she saw him emerge from under the JLTV. He slid into the driver’s seat and she realized with real satisfaction that the son of a dingo had hot-wired it.
The pilot backed into a mass of arachnids that had separated from the main group and now laid siege to soldiers on top of the tank. The vehicle crushed the creatures before he ground it into gear and accelerated toward Ava and the monsters that attempted to destroy the suit and reach the human within.
She thought he would drive around her and eliminate a few of her attackers. Instead, he yelled, “Hold on tight!” and the vehicle careened into her suit to knock her down before he drove over her. Her head smacked the glass and, blinded by pain, she sank into welcome blackness.
Chapter Twenty
She forced her eyes open. “Where am I?” Her voice sounded strangely muffled.
“Ava…Ava, unless you plan to make me right, open the damn cover to the suit. Ava!” Peppy knelt in front of her but it took a moment before she was able to focus on the woman’s face.
Confused, she looked from left to right in an attempt to work out where she was. Weird metal tubing, a conglomeration of controls, and the stench of scorpion guts seeped into her awareness.
“You’ve been unconscious for like three seconds. Open the damn suit, Ava.” Peppy pounded on the front of the robot suit Ava had piloted to save…Peppy?
Still confused, she fumbled at the button and opened the glass shield that separated her from the rest of the world.
Immediately, the world intruded noisily with gunfire, people screaming, and the roar or vehicles. And cheers? Did she really hear cheers?
“Up we go,” Peppy said as she both supported Ava and hauled her out of the suit.
“We ain’t done yet!” Manny shouted from nearby. He sat in the driver’s seat of the JLTV. “This is like the time when I fought off a family of crocodiles, only to have a group
of sharks attack. Fortunately, I’d used my stabbing-muscles for the crocs, so my punching muscles were still plenty fresh.”
“I think…I have a concussion,” Ava managed finally. “What Manny said actually made sense to me.”
“You could be a quadriplegic who believes in the Easter Bunny and an afterlife for all I care. Now get in the damn vehicle!”
She nodded and stumbled into it. She wasn’t a quadriplegic, at least. Gunnar was on the back behind a mounted machine gun. Peppy buckled Ava in before she scrambled on top of the vehicle beside him.
Manny eased down on the accelerator and they circled a writhing mass of scorpions. Gunnar fired his gun, Peppy tossed grenades, and she tried not to barf.
After a few circuits, the gunfire ceased, and people cheered in earnest.
Ava looked through the window to see only the tired movements of exhausted people. The relentless, jerky motion of the arachnids had ceased entirely.
“We did it?” she said.
“Uh…” Manny said. “I dunno? If you eat half of one those giant steaks, do you still get the meal for free?”
“What?”
He sighed. “What I mean is that we finished the scorpion babies off, but the chimesaurus are coming up the other side.”
Gunnar, from the back of the JLTV—that’s what it was, not a car—barked orders at the soldiers and they obeyed and armed themselves with the cache of weapons the civilians had retrieved. They headed for the stairs and the top of Wall Two. Ava found it nothing short of amazing that everyone could do things like walk or think clearly. All she wanted to do was sit.
Peppy made to follow but Manny whistled, and she slid to a halt.
“What? You said it yourself, this fight’s not over.”
“Yeah, but the storm is.” He nodded toward the open hangar door. Outside, the wind was dying down and a calm, moonless night now settled in.