Allegations of “accidents” are all untrue or grossly exaggerated. Ms. Melbeyrs did not threaten or partially eat anyone. Thanks to the E10, she is more herself than ever before.
Arnon D’Bvaym
“WE’RE HERE!” KAYLA said.
Following Kayla, they turned right at another corner. 64Bit found himself staring at a squat, boxy cement building with a large garage door. It had a regular metal door, with a large lock on it, that was lying face down in front of the doorframe, covered in fist-shaped dents and bloody handprints.
Kayla slowed them down quickly as they approached the building, then held up a hand to stop 64Bit and Westley. She crept forward into the building and disappeared from view.
64Bit was all too glad to stop moving; he bent over, lungs filling and emptying like a pair of furnace bellows, and focused on keeping his jellied legs from collapsing, dropping his concentration on the staff’s cloaking function. Westley stood beside him, breathing just as hard. Westley patted 64Bit’s back and said, “Thank you, again, for saving me. That’s twice now.”
And again, I’d rather just not be in the situation in the first place, 64Bit thought. He wiped some spittle from his mouth and said, “Kayla killed the thing. Thank her.”
“It was a team effort,” Westley said.
Kayla poked her head out of the gray building. “We’re in luck. Get in here.”
64Bit unsteadily walked forward, around the fallen door, and into what had once been a waiting area separated from the rest of the room with a chain-link fence. Now, the fence had several gaping holes in it, massacred bodies lay on the floor, and a great deal of dried blood splattered the concrete walls. 64Bit held a sleeve over his face and breathed through his mouth, waving flies away with his other hand, while he followed Kayla through another door into a garage. There, sitting in the middle of the room, were four ATVs.
Kayla grinned as she strode over to the vehicles and touched one. “Got three gas, one special-made by the guardian technomancer. Never been allowed to drive one of these. Should be easy to get ahead of those rozies and zoom out of here—maybe through the front gates, maybe through another hole in the wall, whatever works. We’ll escape into the forest, then hunt down Zed.”
64Bit remembered how difficult it had been for Khalil to maintain enough speed to escape Zed’s scarecrow rozies, but he didn’t speak against what Kayla had said. His trembling legs were all he needed to be persuaded that they needed these vehicles.
“Khalil,” 64Bit whispered. The last time he had seen the man, he was running into the forest to escape Zed, probably headed toward Fort. Was he still alive?
“Won’t be very subtle. We’ll get spotted easily,” Westley said.
Kayla shook her head. “I mean, maybe, but you saw how easily we evaded them with Bit’s tricks. Just attract a crowd, do the weird magic hiding thing, and then turn down another road. We could attract most of the rozies of Fort to one area if we make enough noise, leaving the rest of the settlement as safe as can be for us slip away, at least until they spread out again, however long that takes.” She walked to a chain near the garage door and tugged on it, then pointed at Westley. “Help me open the doors.”
“It’s not magic,” 64Bit said, glaring at Kayla. “And that plan won’t work. I can’t cloak us from the trunk.”
“You can’t?” Kayla asked.
64Bit shook his head. “I looked back—it was still following us. Worse, it was directing some rozies the direction we were going. We still need to move quickly, get out of here now, before the road out is swarming with rozies, but it won’t be the easy escape you thought.”
Kayla frowned. “Well, that’s still not a huge problem. We dodge around them, ride to the other side of the settlement, then hide—they can’t possibly keep up with us.”
64Bit looked at Westley as he gave one last tug to pull the garage door all the way up. “Do you hear her? You know how close we are to dying right now, right? We’ll be ripped apart, masticated alive—at least we might hope to die quickly, given how many would be tearing us open at once.” As if to emphasize his words, a growing rumbling clearly filled the air with the door raised, accompanied by groaning and growling.
“What else can we do?” Westley said. “I mean, we could slip into a nearby building and try to hide until the horde is gone. But I think movement will serve us better.”
“Running just delays the inevitable! That trunk—I watched that thing kill a rozie, eat it, somehow. It tracked us through the forest and found us here, then directed rozies toward us. Running will only make us die somewhere else,” 64Bit said.
Kayla pointed a finger at 64Bit. “Technoboy, where are your solutions? You’re shooting everything down, but all I hear from you is how we’re going to die, soon, and painfully. Well, I’d like to delay that, and maybe if we move, we’ll have new options. Or at least time to think of new ideas. Maybe we could run far enough that we only have to deal with the trunk, or maybe we could blow up a bunch of them with the special ATV.”
64Bit then paused for a moment, pixelated eyes wide. “The particle battery generators.”
“What?”
“Two rozies were killed with the ATV explosion, back with Zed. We could kill another handful that way, or, we could rig Fort’s giant particle battery generators to explode; that would easily blow up the entire settlement and annihilate everything in it. Probably kill the trunk, too—nothing should be able to survive that explosion. The only trouble would be getting out in time.”
Kayla began nodding. “That’s it. That’s it! And then even if Zed isn’t in the settlement, it won’t have that trunk as backup when we finally hunt him down.”
“Rozie!” Westley shouted. 64Bit looked down the road and saw a rozie that had once been a woman, with long, dirty hair and a torn jumpsuit. It stumbled forward, head turning every direction. When it saw them, its glowing eyes locked on and it began stumbling toward them.
“The rest won’t be long. Let’s blow them up,” Kayla said. She hopped onto the particle battery–powered ATV, opened the valve in the side, and released a column of blistering hot air. Then she hopped onto one of the two adjacent ATVs and turned them both on. Westley scrambled onto the ATV beside her, while 64Bit crawled onto the particle battery–powered ATV. Kayla gunned her engine and shot forward.
“Never done this before,” Westley said, eyes wide as he pressed his thumb on the gas. He shot forward, nearly clipping the edge of the garage door frame, and followed after Kayla, zigzagging as he did so.
“Oh, please, let us live today,” 64Bit breathed, and then started driving, initially much slower than Kayla and Westley, then allowed himself to pick up speed. Ahead, Kayla drove past the first rozie they saw, which lunged at her. It grabbed the side of her ATV and held on, legs sparking as its synthetic skin was quickly shredded off, leaving bare metal to scrape against asphalt. Kayla pointed back with her gun, firing three times and missing twice, but the third shot hit the rozie in the head. Its grip slipped and it rolled on the road as Kayla sped off and Westley zipped around it.
64Bit thumbed the gas harder as he passed by the groaning rozie in the road. As he drove, more rozies stumbled into the intersection, forcing him to hug the right side of the road and speed up even more to avoid getting trapped. He couldn’t see Kayla anymore, but he saw Westley turn left several streets down, and hoped that following him was the right move. 64Bit slowed for the turn, then stopped.
Rozies ambled about ahead, largely on the road that intersected the one 64Bit was on, in small bunches or standing alone. One turned and saw 64Bit, then began running toward him, its movements uncomfortably smooth. Where Westley and Kayla had gone, 64Bit couldn’t tell.
64Bit looked to his right; the road continued on for a little way, dead-ending with the curve of Fort’s wall. He looked left and saw rozies stumbling into the intersection next to the garage, then saw the trunk rush ahead of the crowd. It turned its body in a circle, then froze when the woman’s face carved on its front faced 64Bit. With a spray of asphalt, it launched itself forward, spider legs stabbing into the ground as it scuttled toward 64Bit, lid bouncing above its body like a running dog’s jaw bounced below its head.
“Forward it is,” 64Bit said, mouth dry as he gripped his staff like a lance. He commanded it to start its repelling beam, then waved it side to side as he hit the gas and drove forward, aiming himself at the clearest path through the rozies and hoping that he didn’t have to turn.
More rozies took notice and ran or lurched toward 64Bit, flinching or stumbling when 64Bit’s beam passed over them. Soon 64Bit could only focus on the rozies directly in his path, pushing them just out of the way as he shot by, or tripping them over one another and running over their legs. Hands slapped at his legs, leaving red-hot welts, and tried to grab on to the ATV as 64Bit passed, but he gunned the engine even more, going so fast that he almost feared he would blow himself off the ATV.
Wind rushed in 64Bit’s ears as he drove. The ATV occasionally bucked as he ran over a body or debris, threatening to throw him from the ATV or knock his staff from his hands; but he kept driving, taking the longest, clearest roads he could find as he drove back toward the center of the settlement.
Nearer to his home, 64Bit caught sight of Westley and Kayla stopped in the road, looking back. Once 64Bit came into view Kayla took off again, but Westley waited until he was a little closer before he gunned his own engine. Within moments they were back at 64Bit’s house. Kayla and Westley stopped in front of the home, then drove again to follow 64Bit as he made his way around back.
64Bit stopped in front of the particle battery shed, parked, and hopped off, legs shaking. The wind from driving had left his face and the top of his stubbled head raw, and he had to wipe a smashed insect off one of his eye screens. He heard Westley and Kayla squeal to a stop behind him as he opened the wooden door to the shed and pressed his gloved hand against the metal door within.
Please accept mental commands. Please open. Oh, Creator, if you care, please let this door open. Code: 3141592653589793238462643383279. As 64Bit rattled off each number in his head, he felt rather than heard the crowd of rozies moving toward the center of the settlement, a constant pressure in the back of his head that only grew with each moment. He heard the crunching of wood distantly, as if the riot of rozies had grown large enough that it was plowing through buildings rather than around them.
“Not a lot of time, Bit,” Kayla said as 64Bit shakily pulled off his glove, careful not to tug on his mechanical finger, and resized the universal jack on its end to stick it into the shed’s port.
3141592653589793238462643383279, 64Bit thought as fast as he could, having to start over once when he stumbled over the exact order of numbers. There was a release of pressure and the door popped open, a wave of heat and steam curling around its edges. 64Bit released his mechanical finger and grabbed the edge of the door, wincing at the heat of the inside metal, and pulled it all the way open.
The room inside the shed was small, but every surface was covered with a screen, a mess of wires, and large cords, and in the middle were three coffin-sized, gray particle batteries. Heat poured out of the room, making 64Bit sweat, and the air filled with static.
“Is it always that warm?” Westley asked.
64Bit shook his head. “Not enough power is being drained from the batteries. They were going to destabilize anyway. We’re fortunate that . . .” 64Bit stopped, not wanting to waste time on explanations. He stepped into the sweltering shed and plugged his mechanical finger into a computer, then began shutting down connections that drew power away from the batteries, speeding how quickly they would destabilize.
More crunching, and once again the drum of feet on asphalt. 64Bit hated and feared the sound.
“Get the vehicles ready!” 64Bit heard Kayla say. He looked back to see Westley getting on his ATV and turning it to drive straight away while Kayla vented the little heat that had built up in his own ATV. His gaze lingered on his home behind him. It was a corpse of what he once knew, and he was going to finish destroying it.
“The master’s memories,” 64Bit breathed as he stared at the faded outside walls of his home. Despite the boiling heat of the shed, he felt cold.
If he blew up these particle batteries, whatever had processed or stored the master’s memories would be destroyed. Even if the master had backed them up and the backup was stored within the walls of Fort, that would be destroyed, too. 64Bit would never find them, perhaps never understand why the master had broken him. He could find the master and interrogate the old man—planned on it, even if he could find the memories—but he wanted to know, for certain, that he had answers before leaving Fort.
The world seemed frozen in time as 64Bit’s mind ran through the options, his mouth muttering along with the thoughts it could keep up with. “Try Kayla’s plan to just run, use the staff to cloak . . . hope the trunk doesn’t find us . . . Hide until they lose us . . . Run the vents on overclock to help prevent it from exploding . . .”
A building to his left shuddered, then began falling in on itself. Through the rush in 64Bit’s mind, he saw rozies crawling through the wreckage, maddened, forcing their way forward even as the building fell upon them in slow motion.
64Bit glanced at Kayla and Westley. I could tell them I couldn’t set it to blow. They would believe me. If we live, we could come back later.
A lie, just like when I thought I could represent the master. A delay. It would be easy.
64Bit bit his lip hard, tasting blood, to bring himself back into the moment. He cut off all power draw from the particle batteries and noticeably felt their temperature rise as he did so. Just to be safe, he pulled some wires, glowing with heat, their plastic coverings smoking, away from the wall with his staff, then yanked sharply, tearing most of them out of the particle battery generator. Then he ran from the shed, sweat steaming from his robes and condensing on his eye screens, and fumbled his way onto his ATV.
An engine roared. 64Bit wiped the evaporated sweat from his eye screens just in time to see Kayla jump forward on her vehicle, followed by Westley. 64Bit depressed the gas with his thumb entirely, felt his ATV buck forward, and soon the wind in his ears roared too loudly for him to hear anything else. He glanced back once—he’d had moments to spare before a wall of rozie slammed into his home, collapsing walls, and even knocking over the shed. 64Bit briefly caught sight of wires sparking in the air, striking a rozie and causing its eyes to explode with sparks and brain matter, before looking forward and keeping his focus on the road.
Kayla led on a side route. For a moment, 64Bit was confused. Then he recognized it as the path he and Kayla had entered Fort and knew her plan: the hole in the wall was much, much smaller than the front gates. It would bottleneck the rozies, hopefully destroying more of them when the explosion hit.
I would predict we have no more than a minute until that happens, 64Bit thought grimly. He tightened his grip on his handlebars, slowing only when absolutely necessary to make a turn or avoid being thrown off by run-over debris.
Kayla and Westley slowed with just a street left before their exit, but waved 64Bit forward. 64Bit obliged, more than happy to keep moving, but couldn’t imagine why they had stopped. Kayla looked determined in the glimpse he caught as he shot past, Westley nervous. Kayla’s vehicle was pointing at a nearby building, at an angle that would be awkward to turn back onto the road without backing up.
64Bit turned the last corner and saw the hole in the wall, filled with corpses, and blessedly devoid of rozies. Then he felt the hairs on his arms and legs rise into the air, sensed a powerful static in the air that made his eye screens fuzz, and knew they had only moments to spare.
Crunch.
It sounded as if more rozies were piling into buildings behind him, blowing through them. 64Bit hazarded a glance back as he neared the hole, and saw Kayla riding behind Westley on his ATV.
WHOOPH!
Pressure slammed into 64Bit’s back, nearly lifting him over his handlebars as he shot out of the hole at an angle, putting Fort’s wall between him and the expanding explosion. Still he felt the force behind him, pushing him, making him lose control as he hit the brakes and spun out toward the tree line. A back tire hit a tree, stopping the vehicle with a lurch, and then he rolled off of his ATV and cowered behind it.
64Bit’s vision went white. A high-pitch whine struck and pierced his ears, so loud that for several moments he couldn’t hear anything. Then he was knocked to the ground and the ATV lurched toward him, pushed sideways, nearly running over his leg.
He lay there, staring into the sky above him, only visible because leaves were being ripped from branches, branches from trees, as an enormous green cloud mushroomed into the air. He saw things flying through the sky, looking like tiny specks in the distance; then a steaming rozie head, its eyes and synthetic skin burned away, slammed into the ground next to him. 64Bit rolled over and crawled under the ATV, holding his head and shivering, until the world went silent again.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 