Robopocalypse (25 page)

Looking harder at the other people, I notice occasional bits of metal and plastic. Not all of them are made of meat. Some of them are like me. Me and Tom.

“Why are you like that?” I ask.

“The machines changed us,” says Tom. “We’re different, but the same. We call ourselves transhuman.”

Transhuman.

“Is it okay if I touch?” asks Tom, motioning at my eyes.

I nod, and he leans down and touches my face. He peers at my eyes and lightly brushes his fingers against my face where the skin turns to metal.

“I’ve never seen this,” he says. “It’s incomplete. Rob never got to finish. What happened, Mathilda?”

“My mom,” I say.

That’s all I can get out.

“Your mom stopped the operation,” he says. “Good for her.”

Tom stands up. “Dawn,” he says, “this is amazing. The implant has no governor on it. Rob didn’t get the chance to hobble it. I don’t know. I mean, there’s no telling what she can do.”

A wave of rising heartbeats cascades toward me.

“Why are you all excited?” I ask.

“Because,” says Dawn. “We think maybe you can talk to the machines.”

Then Nolan moans. It’s been two hours since we arrived here and he looks terrible. I can hear him breathing in little pants.

“I have to help my brother,” I say.

Five minutes later, Marcus and Tom have placed Nolan next to the autodoc. The machine has its legs raised, poised like needles over my little brother’s sleeping body.

“Make an X-ray, Mathilda,” says Dawn.

I put a hand onto the autodoc and speak to it in my mind:
Hello? Are you there?

Indicate preferred function
.

X-ray?

The spider legs begin to move. Some move out of the way, while others creep around Nolan’s body. A strange clicking sound comes from the writhing legs.

The words come into my mind with an image.
Place patient in the prone position. Remove clothing around the lumbar area
.

I gently turn Nolan over onto his stomach. I pull his shirt up to reveal his back. There are flecks of dark, crusted blood all around the knobs of his spine.

Fix him
, I think to the autodoc.

Error
, it responds.
Surgical functionality unavailable. Database missing. Uplink not present. Antenna attachment required
.

“Dawn,” I say, “it doesn’t know how to do surgery. It wants an antenna so it can get instructions.”

Marcus turns to Dawn, concerned. “It’s trying to trick us. If we give it the antenna, it will call for help. They’ll track us down.”

Dawn nods. “Mathilda, we can’t risk that—”

But she stops cold when she sees me.

Someplace in my head, I know that the arms of the autodoc are silently rising into the air behind me, instruments gleaming. The countless needles and scalpels hover there on swaying legs, menacing. Nolan needs help and if they won’t give it, I’m willing to take it.

I frown at the group of people and set my jaw.

“Nolan
needs
me.”

Marcus and Dawn look at each other again.

“Mathilda?” asks Dawn. “How do you know it’s not a trap, honey? I know you want to help Nolan, but you also don’t want to hurt us.”

I think about it.

“The autodoc is smarter than the spiker,” I say. “It can talk. But it’s not
that
smart. It’s just asking for what it needs. Like an error message.”

“But that thinking Rob is out there—” says Marcus.

Dawn touches Marcus on the shoulder.

“Okay, Mathilda,” says Dawn.

Marcus gives up arguing. He looks around, sees something, and strides across the room. Reaching up, he grabs a wire dangling from the ceiling and swings it back and forth to unloop it from a piece of metal. Then he hands it to me, eyeing the autodoc’s swaying legs.

“This cable goes to the building above us. It’s long and metal and it goes high. Perfect antenna. Be careful.”

I barely hear him. The instant the antenna touches my hand a tidal wave of information comes flooding into my head. Into my eyes. Streams of numbers and letters and images fill my vision. None of it makes sense at first. Swirls of color blow through the air in front of me.

That’s when I feel it. Some kind of … mind. An alien
thing
, stalking through the data, searching for me. Calling out my name.
Mathilda?

The autodoc begins speaking in a constant babble.
Scanning initiated. One, two, three, four. Query satellite uplink. Database access. Download initiated. Ortho-, gastro-, uro-, gyno-, neuro …

It’s too fast. Too much. I can’t understand what the autodoc is saying anymore. I’m getting dizzy as the information surges into me. The monster calls for me again, and now it is closer. I think of those cold doll eyes that night in my bedroom and the way that lifeless thing whispered my name in the darkness.

The colors spin around me like a tornado.

Stop
, I think. But nothing happens. I can’t breathe. The colors are too bright and they’re drowning me, making it so that I can’t think.
Stop!
I shout with my mind. And my name comes again, louder this time, and I can’t tell where my arms are or how many I have.
What am I?
I scream inside my head, with everything in me.

STOP!

I drop the antenna like a snake. The colors fade. The images and symbols drop to the floor and are swept away like fall leaves into the corners of the room. The vivid colors bleach away into the dull white tile.

I take one breath. Then two. The autodoc legs start to move.

There are tiny motor sounds as the autodoc works on Nolan. A spotlight flicks on and shines on his back. A rotating scrubber comes down and cleans his skin. A syringe goes in and out almost too fast to see. The movements are quick and precise and full of little pauses, like when the petting zoo chickens used to turn their heads and peck at corn.

In the sudden quiet, I can hear something beneath the static of the tiny motor noises. It is a voice.

 … sorry for what I’ve done. I’m called Lurker. I’m bringing down the British Telecom tower communications blockade. Should open up satellite access, but I don’t know for how long. If you can hear this message, the comm lines are still open. The satellites are free. Use them while you can. The damned machines will—Ah, no. Christ, please. Can’t hold on any longer. I’m sorry.… Catch you in the funny pages, mate
.

After about ten seconds, the broken message repeats. I can barely hear it. The man sounds very scared and young but also proud. I hope that he is okay, wherever he is.

Finally, I stand up. Behind me, I can feel the autodoc operating on Nolan. The group of people still stand, watching me. I have barely been aware that they are here. Talking to the machines takes such concentration. I can hardly see people anymore. It is so easy to lose myself in the machine.

“Dawn?” I say.

“Yes, honey?”

“There’s a man out there, talking. His name is Lurker. He says he destroyed a communications blockade. He says the satellites are free.”

The people look at each other in wonder. Two of them hug. Tom and Marcus slap their hands together. They make small, happy noises. Smiling, Dawn puts her hands on my shoulders.

“That’s good, Mathilda. It means we can talk to other people. Rob never destroyed the communications satellites, it just blocked them off from us.”

“Oh,” I say.

“This is very important, Mathilda,” she says. “What else do you hear out there? What’s the most important message?”

I put my hands on the sides of my face and concentrate. I listen very hard. And when I listen
beyond
the man’s repeating voice, I find that I can hear further into the network.

There are so many messages floating around. Some of them are sad. Some are angry. Many of them are confused or cutoff or rambling, but one of them sticks out in my mind. It is a special message with three familiar words in it:

Robot defense act
.

Mathilda had only scratched the surface of her abilities. In the coming months, she would hone her special gift in the relative safety of the New York City underground, protected by Marcus and Dawn
.

The message she was able to find on this day, due to the ultimate sacrifice made by Lurker and Arrtrad in London, proved instrumental in the formation of a North American army. Mathilda Perez had found a call to arms issued by Paul Blanton, and the location of humankind’s greatest enemy
.

—
CORMAC
WALLACE,
MIL#GHA217

2. C
ALL TO
A
RMS

We have discovered the location of a superintelligent
machine that calls itself Archos
.

S
PC
. P
AUL
B
LANTON

NEW WAR + 1 YEAR,
1 MONTH

The following message originated in Afghanistan. It was intercepted and retransmitted worldwide by Mathilda Perez in New York City. We know that, thanks to her efforts, this communication was received by everyone in North America with access to a radio, including scores of tribal governments, isolated resistance groups, and the remaining enclaves of United States armed forces
.

—
CORMAC
WALLACE,
MIL#GHA217

Headquarters
Afghan Resistance Command
Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan

To: Survivors
From: Specialist Paul Blanton, United States Army

We are sending this message to urge you to use whatever influence you have as a member of a surviving North American human stronghold to convince your leadership of the terrible consequences which will be suffered by all humankind if you do not immediately organize and deploy an offensive force to march against the robots.

Recently, we have discovered the location of a superintelligent machine that calls itself Archos—the central artificial intelligence backing the robot uprising. This machine is hiding in an isolated location in western Alaska. We call this area the Ragnorak Intelligence Fields. Coordinates are integrated in electronic format at the end of this message.

Before the New War began, there is evidence that Archos quashed the robot defense act before it could pass Congress. Since Zero Hour, Archos has been using our existing robotic infrastructure—both civilian and military—to viciously attack humankind. It is clear that the enemy is willing to pay an enormous cost in effort and resources to continue decimating our population centers.

Worse yet, the machines are evolving.

Within the space of three weeks, we have encountered three new varieties of specialized robotic hunter-killers designed to locomote in rough terrain, penetrate our cave bunkers, and destroy our personnel. The design of these machines has been informed by newly constructed biological research stations that are allowing the machines to study the natural world.

The machines are now designing and building themselves. More varieties are coming. We believe that these new robots will have greatly increased agility, survivability, and lethality. They will be tailored to fight your people, in your geographic environment, and in your weather conditions.

Let there be no doubt in your mind that the combined onslaught of these new machines, working twenty-four hours a day, will soon be unleashed by Archos on your native land.

We implore you to confirm these facts to your leaders, and to do your utmost to urge them to gather an offensive force which can march to the attached coordinates in Alaska to put a stop to the evolution of these killing machines and prevent the total annihilation of humankind.

March cautiously, as Archos will surely sense our approach. But rest assured that your soldiers will not march alone. Similar militias will be mustered from across human-occupied territory to do battle with our enemy in its own domain.

Heed this call to arms.

We can guarantee you that unless every human stronghold in range of Alaska retaliates, this rain of autonomous killing machines will increase manyfold in complexity and fury.

To my fellow humans
With best regards from

Specialist Paul R. Blanton

It is widely believed that these words, translated into dozens of human languages, are responsible for the organized human retaliation that began roughly two years after Zero Hour. In addition, there is deeply dismaying evidence that this call to arms was received abroad—resulting in a largely undocumented and ultimately doomed attack on Archos mounted by Eastern European and Asian forces
.

—
CORMAC
WALLACE,
MIL#GHA217

3. T
HE
C
OWBOY
W
AY

The buck’s gotta stop somewhere
.

L
ONNIE
W
AYNE
B
LANTON

NEW WAR + 1 YEAR,
4 MONTHS

Four months after we arrived at the fabled defensive stronghold of Gray Horse, the city fell into disarray. The call to arms had paralyzed the tribal council with indecision. Lonnie Wayne Blanton trusted his son implicitly and argued to muster the army and march; however, John Tenkiller insisted on staying to defend. As I describe in these pages, Rob ultimately made the choice for us
.

—
CORMAC
WALLACE,
MIL#GHA217

I’m standing on the edge of Gray Horse bluffs, blowing into my hands for warmth and squinting as the dawn breaks like fire over the Great Plains below. The thin cries of thousands of cattle and buffalo rise in the still morning.

With Jack in the lead, our squad was on the move nonstop to get here. Everywhere we’ve been, nature is back in action. There’re more birds in the sky, more bugs in the bushes, and more coyotes in the night. As the months pass, mother earth has been swallowing up everything but the cities. The cities are where Rob lives.

A lean Cherokee kid stands next to me, methodically packing chewing tobacco into his mouth. He’s watching the plains with expressionless brown eyes and doesn’t seem to notice me at all. It’s hard not to notice
him
, though.

Lark Iron Cloud.

He looks about twenty and he’s decked out in some kind of slick uniform. A black-and-red scarf is tucked under a half-zipped jacket and his pale green pant legs are folded into polished leather cowboy boots. Black goggles hang around his tawny neck. He’s holding a walking stick with feathers hanging from it. The stick is made of metal—some kind of antenna he must have snapped off a Rob scout walker. A war trophy.

This kid looks like a fighter pilot from the future. And here I am in my ripped-up, mud-splattered army combat uniform. I’m not sure which of us should be ashamed of his appearance, but I’m pretty sure it’s me.

“Think we’ll go to war?” I ask the kid.

He looks over at me for a second, then back at the vista.

“Maybe. Lonnie Wayne’s on it. He’ll let us know.”

“You trust him?”

“He’s the reason I’m alive.”

“Oh.”

A flock of birds flaps across the sky, sunlight glinting from their wings like the rainbow on a pool of oil.

“Y’all look pretty rough,” says Lark, motioning to the rest of my squad with his stick. “What are you, like, soldiers?”

I look at my squad mates. Leonardo. Cherrah. Tiberius. Carl. They stand around talking, waiting for Jack to return. Their movements are familiar, relaxed. The last few months have forged us into more than just a unit—we’re a family now.

“Nah. We’re not soldiers, just survivors. My brother, Jack, he’s the soldier. I’m just tagging along for the sheer fun of it.”

“Oh,” says Lark.

I can’t tell if he just took me seriously or not.

“Where’s your brother at?” Lark asks.

“In the war council. With Lonnie and them.”

“So he’s one of those.”

“One of what?”

“Responsible kind.”

“People say that. You’re not?”

“I do my thing. The old-timers do theirs.”

Lark gestures behind us with the walking stick. There, waiting patiently in a row, are dozens of what these people call spider tanks. The walking tanks each stand about eight feet tall. The four sturdy legs are Rob created, made of ropy synthetic muscles. The rest of the tanks have been modified by human beings. Most vehicles have tank turrets and heavy-machine-gun mounts on top, but I see that one has the cab and blade off a bulldozer.

What can I say? It’s just an anything goes kind of war.

Rob didn’t come at Gray Horse all at once; it had to evolve to get up here. That meant sending walking scouts. And some of those scouts got caught. Some of
those
got taken apart and put back together again. Gray Horse Army prefers to fight with captured robots.

“You’re the one who figured out how to liberate the spider tanks? To lobotomize them?” I ask.

“Yep,” he says.

“Jesus. Are you a scientist or something?”

Lark chuckles. “A mechanic is just an engineer in blue jeans.”

“Damn,” I say.

“Yep.”

I look out over the prairie and see something odd.

“Hey, Lark?” I ask.

“Yeah?” he says.

“You live around here. So maybe you can tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“Just what in the fuck is that?” I ask, pointing.

He looks out over the plain. Sees the sinuous, glinting metal writhing through the grass like a hidden river. Lark spits tobacco on the ground, turns, and motions to his squad with the walking stick.

“That’s our war, brother.”

Confusion and death. The grass is too tall. The smoke is too thick.

Gray Horse Army is made up of every able-bodied adult in the city—men and women, young and old. A thousand soldiers and some change. They’ve been drilling together for months and they’ve almost all got guns, but nobody knows anything once those killing machines are slicing through the grass and latching onto people.

“Stay with the tanks,” Lonnie said. “Stay with old
Houdini
and you’ll be fine.”

Custom-made spider tanks plod across the prairie in a ragged line, one measured step after another. Their massive feet sink into the damp earth and their chest hulls trample the grass down, leaving a wake behind them. A few soldiers cling to the top of each tank, weapons out, scanning the fields.

We’re marching out to face what’s in the grass. Whatever it is, we’ve got to stop it before it reaches Gray Horse.

I stay with my squad, following the tank called
Houdini
on foot. Jack’s up on top with Lark. I’ve got Tiberius lumbering on one side of me and Cherrah on the other. Her profile is sharp in the morning light. She looks feline, quick, and ferocious. And, I can’t help thinking, beautiful. Carl and Leo are buddying up a few meters away. We all focus on staying with the tanks—they’re our only frame of reference in this never-ending maze of tall grass.

For twenty minutes we clomp across the plains, trying our best to look through the grass and see whatever’s waiting for us out here. Our primary goal is to stop the machines from advancing on Gray Horse. Secondary goal is to protect the herds of cattle that live out here on the prairie—the lifeblood of the city.

We don’t even know what kind of Rob we’re facing. Only that it’s new varieties. Always something new with our friend Rob.

“Hey, Lark,” calls Carl. “Why they call ’em spider tanks if they only have four legs?”

Lark calls down from the tank, “ ’Cause it beats calling it a large, quadruped walker.”

“Well, I don’t think it does,” mutters Carl.

The first concussion throws dirt and shredded plants into the air, and the screams start coming from the tall grass. A herd of buffalo stampedes, and the world rings with vibration and noise. Instant chaos.

“What’s out there, Jack?” I shout. He’s crouched on top of the spider tank, heavy mounted gun swiveling from one side to the other. Lark steers the tank. His gloved hand is wrapped tight in a rope wrapped around the hull, rodeo style.

“Nothing yet, little brother,” calls Jack.

For a few minutes there are no targets, only faceless screams.

Then something comes crashing through the yellow stalks of grass. We all pivot and aim our weapons at it—a huge Osage man. He’s huffing and puffing and dragging an unconscious body by its blood-slicked arms. The unconscious guy looks like he got hit by a meteorite. There’s a deep, bleeding crater in his upper thigh.

More explosions rip through the soldiers out in front of the tanks. Lark yanks his hand, and
Houdini
transitions to a trot gait, motors grinding as it moves full speed ahead to provide support. Jack turns and watches me, shrugging as the tank lumbers away into the grass.

“Help,” bawls the big Osage.

Fuck
. I signal a stop to the squad and watch our spider tank over the Osage man’s shoulder as it takes another plodding step away from our position, leaving behind a half-crushed swath of grass. Every step it takes leaves us more exposed to whatever is out here.

Cherrah drops to her knee and tourniquets the unconscious man’s damaged leg. I grab the blubbering Osage by the shoulders and give him a little shake.

“What did this?” I ask.

“Bugs, man. They’re like bugs. They get on you and then blow up,” says the Osage, wiping tears off his face with a meaty forearm. “I gotta get Jay out of here. He’s gonna die.”

The concussions and the screams are coming thicker now. We crouch as gunshots ring out and stray bullets tear through the grass. It sounds like a massacre. A fine rain of dirt particles have started to float down from the clear blue sky.

Cherrah looks up from her tourniquet job and we make grim eye contact. It’s a silent agreement: You watch my back and I’ll watch yours. Then I flinch as a shower of dirt cascades through the grass and rattles against my helmet.

Our spider tank is long gone, and Jack with it.

“Okay,” I say, slapping the Osage man on the shoulder. “That should stop the bleeding. Take your friend back. We’re moving forward, so you’re on your own. Keep your eyes open.”

The Osage man throws his friend over his shoulder and hustles away. It sounds like whatever happened to old Jay has already torn through the front ranks and is coming for us, too.

I hear Lark start screaming from somewhere ahead of us.

And for the first time, I see the enemy. Early-model stumpers. They remind me of the scuttle mines from that first moment of Zero Hour in Boston, a million years ago. Each one is the size of a baseball, with a knot of flailing legs that somehow shoves its little body over and through the clumps of grass.

“Shit!” shouts Carl. “Let’s get out of here!”

The lanky soldier starts to run away. By instinct, I catch him by the front of his sweaty shirt and stop him. I yank his face down to my level, look into his wide eyes, and say one word: “Fight.”

My voice is even, but my body is on fire with adrenaline.

Pop. Pop. Pop
.

Our guns light up the dirt, dashing the stumpers to pieces. But more are coming. And more after that. It’s a tidal wave of crawling nasties flowing through the grass like ants.

“It is getting too heavy,” calls Tiberius. “What do we do, Cormac?”

“Three-round burst,” I call. A half-dozen rifles snick into auto mode.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop
.

Rifle muzzles flash, painting shadows on our dirt-covered faces. Spouts of dirt and twisted metal jet from the ground, along with occasional flares as the liquids inside the stumpers come into contact. We stand in a semicircle and pour lead into the dirt. But the stumpers keep coming, and they’re starting to spread out around us, swarm style.

Jack is gone and somehow I’m in charge, and now we’re going to get blown to pieces. Where the fuck is Jack? My hero brother is supposed to save me from situations like this.

Goddamnit
.

As the stumpers close in I call out, “Fall in on me!”

Two minutes later I’m sweating under the sun, my right shoulder pressed into Cherrah’s left shoulder blade, and almost shooting at my own feet. Carl is squeezed tight between big Leo and Ty. I can smell Cherrah’s long black hair and I can picture her smile in my head, but I can’t let myself think of that right now. A shadow passes over my face and the legend himself, Lonnie Wayne Blanton, falls out of the sky.

The old dude is riding a tall walker—one of Lark’s Frankenstein projects. The thing is just two seven-foot-long robotic ostrich legs with an old rodeo saddle grafted onto it. Lonnie Wayne sits up top, cowboy boots pushed into stirrups and hand resting lazily on the pommel. Lonnie rides the tall walker like an old pro, hips swaying with each giraffe step of the machine. Just like a damn cowboy.

“Howdy, y’all,” he says. Then he turns and unloads a couple of shotgun blasts into the tangled pile of stumpers scurrying over the churned dirt toward our position.

“Doin’ great, bud,” Lonnie Wayne says to me. My face is blank. I can’t believe I’m still alive.

Just then, two more tall walkers drop into our clearing, the Osage cowboys on top raining down shotgun blasts that tear big gouges out of the oncoming stumper swarm.

Inside a few seconds, the three tall walkers have used their high vantage points and the spread of shotgun blasts to eradicate most of the stumper swarm. Not all of it, though.

“Watch your leg,” I yell up to Lonnie.

A stumper that’s somehow gotten behind us is climbing the metal of Lonnie’s tall walker leg. He glances down, then leans in the saddle in a way that causes the leg to raise up and shake. The stumper flies away into the underbrush, where it’s promptly blasted by one of my squad.