No, this must have a real, practical function in our world, in reality, or it does not function at all. Meta-worlds are not sufficient. The E10 is real.
Arnon D’Bvaym
“I FEEL A tickle in my throat,” Westley grunted.
“This can’t be right,” 64Bit muttered to himself. “I didn’t feel much of a pull that direction—there can’t be a rozie in here. Another survivor? Unless . . .” He realized that the pull he felt laterally was only in one direction, but if he shifted his attention, he did feel pulling sensations in all directions above him. “I didn’t know I needed to look down,” he groaned.
“Technoboy, what is it? Do you see something that I don’t?” Kayla asked. Her hand strayed to the knife at her hip.
“Sorry,” Westley gasped, then buried his face in his elbow and began coughing. Even muffled into his arm, the sound felt like an explosion in the small basement room. Then everything went still for just a moment.
“Kayla, back up now,” 64Bit said.
Then the door on the far wall exploded in, throwing shards of wood through the air. A rozie stepped into the gloom of the room. It was bald, with shredded synthetic skin on its hands and feet, and bloodstained clothing. Something black covered much of its face, including its eyes—perhaps tar had been thrown on it. The rozie looked around and groaned, then staggered forward, questing with its arms and hands as it did so.
Kayla ducked under one of the rozie’s searching arms as it passed, then scurried behind it and pulled out her knife. The rozie kept lurching ahead, directly at Westley, who stared at it in frozen shock, only able to see what was illuminated by the shaky beam of 64Bit’s light.
“Move!” 64Bit stepped forward and shoved Westley to the side with his staff hand, pushing Westley toward the wall and the couch. 64Bit then ducked and felt one of the rozie’s hands whoosh through the air above him. The rozie growled, its expression becoming angry, and it kicked, connecting with 64Bit’s stomach and sending him flying through the air. He struck a wall with his back, heard a crack, and then slid to the ground, barely aware of what was happening. His staff bounced to his feet.
Crashing, crunching, yelping, and the sound of more groans above. 64Bit shook his head, realized his eye screens were off, and commanded them back on. He saw Kayla, a broken knife in her hand, trying not to trip on the corpses in the middle of the room as she backed away from the rozie’s swipes. The couch had been thrown, revealing just a human leg where it had sat. Westley was standing with his back against the wall, eyes darting across the room.
“Stop moving your light away from me!” Kayla said. 64Bit looked back toward her, but it was too late—her foot landed on something soft and squishy and slipped, throwing her onto her back. The rozie pawed at the air for a second, then looked down with its eyeless face as its lurching steps connected with Kayla’s feet. Kayla bared her teeth and spat at the creature.
“Oh, help! Oh, help! My leg! Oh, there’s blood everywhere!” A voice rang out from the room the rozie had been in. The rozie paused, then slammed a fist down; Kayla moved her leg out of the way just in time. The voice continued, “Oh, my sweet, sweet lifeblood!”
The rozie swiveled its head toward the sound of the voice. Kayla threw the hilt of her broken knife toward the sound; the hilt disappeared into the room beyond and knocked something over with a crash. The rozie began lurching toward the sound, groaning, “Empty,” as it moved.
“Oh, I perish!” the voice said.
Kayla jumped to her feet and ran to 64Bit, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him to his feet. “Hurry!” she whispered, then ran toward the closed door. 64Bit found it was hard to breathe, and his back ached, but he didn’t have time for a self-examination. He unsteadily scooped up the staff and skirted around the bodies that had been kicked about by the shuffling rozie, then followed Kayla and Westley out of the basement room and into a stairwell, shutting the door behind him. He heard crashing sounds from the rozie on the other side of the door, and then the splintering of wood from the far side of the room—perhaps more rozies had just entered. 64Bit didn’t want to stick around to find out.
“It is not possible that someone was alive in the room the rozie came from—right?” 64Bit said as Kayla led the way up the stairs.
Westley shook his head. “I threw my voice.” He then stuck his face in his arm and shuddered as he held back another cough.
“Quiet,” Kayla whispered. “Technoboy, keep your light focused up here as much as possible. Turn it off immediately if we catch any rozie that can actually see.” She scanned the area at the top of the stairs. This part of the house, too, revealed violence—bloodstains on the walls, floor, and ceiling; holes punched through the walls, letting weak, late-evening light leak in. Kayla led them up a nearby flight of stairs.
The second floor of the house was one corridor with doors off each side, some of which had been broken down. Kayla forged forward, but 64Bit paused for a moment and tried to sort out what he felt around him a little more thoroughly than he had before. There was no pull above him, and the pull to either side was nearly unnoticeable—if there were any rozies in the second floor of other buildings, they were certainly distant. The pull below him was growing stronger, though, and was accompanied by crashing and groaning noises. If he concentrated, 64Bit almost thought he could pick out several sources of the pulling sensation—four, perhaps five. He shook his head, then hastened to catch up with Kayla and Westley. They couldn’t do anything to stop even just one rozie; 64Bit was confident its random kick had left him with cracked ribs.
Kayla peeked into each room they passed, opening doors where necessary, and then led them into a room that had once belonged to children, judging from the small pads that circled the floor and a cloth doll discarded in a corner. Kayla ignored these and went to the boarded-up window. She tested the lower boards; they easily came off. She stood to the side and ushered Westley through, then 64Bit.
“How did you know?” 64Bit asked.
“Why do you think you always saw children running around on rooftops?” Kayla said. “Almost every house has boards pulled loose in the right rooms.”
The space between boards was tight; 64Bit managed to get himself most of the way out when his robe caught on something, leaving one foot above his head. He held his injured hand in the air and flailed for a moment before the bottom of his robe tore and he rolled onto the roof, losing his staff in the process. It clattered onto the sloped surface and began rolling away.
“No!” 64Bit cried as the staff bounced into open air. Then Westley’s hand shot out and he grabbed it. He handed it back with a smile and helped 64Bit to his feet.
“Careful, there!” Westley said. “And, uh, thank you for saving my life. I froze up when that rozie charged me.”
64Bit stared at Westley for a moment, unsure how to respond. He had regretted pushing Westley out of the way the moment the rozie kicked him across the room; he didn’t even know why he had responded that way in the first place. He nodded. “Glad we all survived.”
“Something is coming up the stairs. We’re not out of the clear yet,” Kayla said as she slipped out the window easily. She looked at the next home over. “You two think you can make that jump?”
64Bit looked at the gap and shook his head. “That’s at least a ten-foot gap!”
“But you don’t have to actually make it; you could land on one of the shanty houses in the alley,” Kayla said.
64Bit looked down at the splintery wood that made up the little ramshackle homes between the full-sized ones. He wasn’t certain he trusted their roofs not to collapse on him the moment he landed on them.
“They’re bunched up near the front,” Westley said, looking over the roof. 64Bit crawled forward and followed his gaze; a whole crowd of rozies were pushing their way into the house, through windows, the front door, and existing holes in the wall. 64Bit looked up and down the street and noticed that it was empty.
“Maybe all the rozies in the area bunched up when they heard the noise,” 64Bit said. “If we can get out of here before one of them notices, we might be in the clear.”
“Climb to the ground using the shanty house, then,” Kayla said. “Or just drop—we’re just on a first-floor roof. It’s not that far.” To prove her point she rolled off the side and landed in a crouch, then looked up and whispered, “See?”
Westley scooted to the side of the building and lowered himself down with his arms before falling the rest of the way. As Westly dropped, 64Bit looked at the shanty houses, which had roofs just a few feet below the one he was on, and the hard-packed dirt of the ground much farther below. He wasn’t sure which one would be least likely to break his ankle.
There was crashing and groaning behind him, then the splintering of wood. Whatever had entered the second story wasn’t searching the floor as calmly as Kayla had. 64Bit tossed his staff to Westley, then tried to mimic what Westley had done, but one-handed—there was no way he could trust his injured hand to hold him up without taking further damage. He swayed in the air, one hand on the roof, then let go and crumpled to the ground.
“Are you okay?” Westley asked, standing over him.
64Bit groaned. He hadn’t landed right on one ankle, in addition to bruising his hip when his legs had failed him. “Battered,” 64Bit responded.
“On your feet,” Kayla whispered, standing near the back corner of the house. “If we move fast into the shanty houses, we should lose them.”
“A rozie coming from the shanty houses started this trouble,” Westley pointed out.
“Yeah, but I think technoboy was right when he suggested that all the rozies in the area are trying to force their way into that house right now—I glanced around while you two took your time and didn’t see anything nearby, but I definitely found footprints moving toward the house. Let’s move, fast.”
64Bit allowed Westley to help him to his feet. His ankle was sore, but he could move. He followed behind Kayla and Westley again, into the shantytown, in the direction of his home. As they ran, the sounds of groaning and splintering wood faded behind them.
A few minutes later, 64Bit’s ankle throbbing horribly, all was quiet again. They kept moving, everyone wanting to put distance between themselves and the crowd of rozies before night fell any further.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 